Let us haste to Kelvingrove

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They don’t ask me now, but people used to pose the question “As an architect and a Christian, wouldn’t you like to design a Church Building”   They were generally disappointed when I said “No, not really”  You see, I had no desire, inspiration or passion to design a church.  I had always believed (and still do) that the church is not a building.  It is the people of God wherever they are and wherever the met. The building was and is incidental.  That is not to say that I was not deeply affected and sometimes awe struck when visiting great church buildings: with the sheer majesty of the cathedral church of Notre-Dame de Reims, with the intimacy and simplicity of the parish church on Papa Stour, with monasteries in Romania and reformed churches in Hungary, with the work of Alvar Aalto and Corbusier especially with Notre Dame du Haut and many many more. Yet my appreciation of these building was perhaps esoteric and detached and I would have no conviction that they related at all to a real and living church, a gathering of God’s people for worship and service. There was a disconnect in my mind.

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I had qualified in 1973 and worked for 7 years with the late Jack Notman in Glasgow.  His output as far as building was not prolific but I learned much during my time with him. I still follow the principles that I learned then: designing buildings, that were of quality and would last, that would provide comfort and convenience and would be life affirming for those who use them, that were designed using the simple elements of space, light, materials, colour and textures, examining how spaces connect with each other, how people move though a building and what it says about who we are and what we are about. The aim was always to achieve something of real value with a timeless quality.

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Towards the end of my time with Jack Notman, I was involved in a number of significant projects, among them, the conversation of  Trinity Congregational Church, in the west end of Glasgow, as a rehearsal and concert hall for the then Scottish National Orchestra (now the RSNO). It was a very interesting project as it involved changing the role of the building from an ecclesiastical one to an arts and entertainment one. It was challenge to de- ecclesiasticise the structure, while retaining its character. It was opened by Princess Margaret in 1978, became a very successful project, won several awards and remained the home for the orchestra up until very recently.   Not long after it was opened, I was at a concert with a friend, who was a minister and, during the interval, he turned to me and said “This would make a good church”.  The throw-a-way comment stuck with me and I came to see that Church Buildings are, in fact, important. They do matter and like the clothes we wear, affect how we feel about ourselves and how others view us.  So began, for me, a new direction in the adapting and refurbishing of church buildings, altering, extending, re-ordering, refreshing , preparing feasibility studies and designs for new buildings which has extended to over 50 individual projects for a wide variety of Christian denominations.

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So it is not difficult to understand my surprise and my delight when I heard, just this week, that Trinity Congregational Church designed by John Honeyman in 1863, converted into the Henry Wood Hall by Jack Notman in 1978 was to begin a third life as a Church Building in 2016 as The Tron Kelvingrove.

Crawford Mackenzie

(I was not the Job Architect on this project but helped with drawings and details. The person who was, and who did all the real work on it, was Nigel Duncan)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

An Indian Summer

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IMG_3327A morning walk through Magdalen in the eye of the storm under a clear blue sky, with a twin prop glinting on its descent  to the west, the Edinburgh train slowly snaking over the river, a dog walker in the distance and a thrush in song just feet away in the hawthorn, is shouting to me  “Spring” . But It could be an Indian summer, that surprising, delightful experience when after the dark depressing days, of winter you are treated to an unseasonal and unpredicted period of unbounded joy and colour, freshness, stillness and the unrestrained chatter of life.

This has been my Indian summer, one that is hard to describe and maybe impossible to put into words so it has to be in part metaphor.

It is climbing up a steep and unrelenting slope with small shafts of light through the trees the short rests and diversions before once again getting the head down,  up and up  with no hint of a summit or even a false summit.  You are fixed on the task, persistent and persevering. Then suddenly and surprisingly you come into a clearing, a plateau where the trees divide and the full strength of the sun breaks through and showers the ground and you in warmth and colour.   The soft wind circles among the leaves and the undergrowth, with the smell and taste of the finest wine, the clearest water the unmistakable sense of life. You know it’s not the end of the journey, it’s not even the beginning of the end, there are dark places still to pass through, swamps to cross  and a host of struggles to overcome but for now…..for now it is a time for refreshment and a simple basking  in the wonder of it all.

It is liberation from the dead hand of all the isms the world can conjure and the lifting of a cloud that had silently and subtly distorted the vision, fudged the issues and hid the horizon.

It is being open in a new way to the Holy Spirit’s leading into better places.

It is a new interest and thirsting for God’s word. The Word that created all things came to us, to save, heal, restore and call us to be his children. The Word that we find within the pages of the Bible, that treasure trove of never-ending wisdom and delight.  That Word that I want to hear first thing every morning, before the BBC, the Guardian, Al Jazeera or anything that the clever people might say.  That Word, not fully grasped or yet fully understood, I want to meditate upon and align my thoughts and will with it, through the long hours and until the day ends.

It is a new passion for prayer, for conversation with a heavenly father and these special moments when it is shared with others.

It is a new delight and unfettered joy in the experience of being one small part of the family of believers, that crosses every continent, every culture and language, every strata of society.

It is a new spring in the step not dictated by outside change nor brought about by circumstance induced euphoria, but from the sheer relief of touching reality

It is a sense of being pulled gently but firmly back to where I should have been all along. It is a new desire to live a holy life.

So in the plethora of mixed metaphors, through the long dark winter, this has been the Indian summer of my life.

Crawford Mackenzie

black watch

Living in the Compound

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Stepping into the third world is a strong experience: like venturing beyond the garden gate for the first time, like being blindfolded and swung round in a party game. It is disorientating. All the comforting re-assuring things we rely on to guides us through normal life are gone. We find ourselves in a world without the norms and mores we expect and take for granted: of language, culture, food, smells, toilet and sleeping arrangements, customs, services, institutions and time, especially time. It is as if we are set loose in a wild landscape where nothing is certain any more.

In the west, it seems, we have a very skewed view of the reality of world. We describe the third world as if it were an undeveloped part of our world, when in fact it is the world and we are only a tiny part of it. We are in a very small walled garden, a compound with its walls, gates and barbed wire. Inside we are protected, safe and warm and free to think and discuss and plan and be creative without the crippling business of surviving.

My sense is that the walls of our compound will not, in time, be able to hold out against the inevitable tide which will overrun them. We will not be able to protect our way of life forever. It is not sustainable. Anyone can see that. It is patently clear, yet the impression I get is that we are in denial. We have confidence that we are able to respond to crises that come our way and carry on with our lives. Whether it is a financial collapse, a terrorist threat or the current refugees’ crisis we feel we will be able to sort it out and it won’t threaten our existence. (Interestingly enough the big three still very much threaten us and don’t show any sign of going away.) Even using the word “crises” suggests that they are nothing more than temporary irritants and so we are seduced into thinking that everything will be ok and our culture, so strong, it will see off all comers. Witness Andrew Neil’s rant on BBC (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WIKg3Qexn7U), following the Paris attacks. It is a belief that our democracy and civilisation will not only last for a thousand years but for ever.  This unashamed arrogance is astonishing as it is breath-taking in its blindness. We seem to have a collective short memory and are wilfully ignorant of the reality of history and of biblical prophecy.

So my heart is not in reinforcing the walls and securing the gates. My heart is for reaching out, sharing what we have left, while we still have it. All the good things:  our education, culture, structures and institutions, laws and orders, the sense of the common good, honesty and integrity in public life, what we have learned and found to work, most of which has, it has to recognised,  come from the Bible.  Sharing as much of it as we can before the wreckers and vandals destroy it completely. In my experience it is what the people of the world want. It is what they come here for. It is not for the weather. The business of trying to protect and shore up our way of life, our British values, whatever they might be, by building walls, and bolting doors is in itself a hopeless and futile project. It is futile because the destruction of our way of life is happening from within. The vandals are home grown. Bit by bit we have chipped away at the foundations, grubbed out the roots and the structure has become very unstable. It won’t take much to push it over. We have broken away from our moorings and set adrift in an uncertain sea, scrambling about for anything, any common denominator (usually the lowest)  that will hold the thing together. Yet still we carry an over inflated confidence in our ability to ride out any storm. We believe that our way, the way of liberal democracy, is somehow invincible. It isn’t.

This is not the time for erecting fences, getting the wagons into a circle or retiring into a lager. That will only prolong the agony and the inevitable fall. This is the time for breaking out. It is the time for opening our hearts and our lives and telling the Good News while people are still listening.

Crawford Mackenzie

Ounaminthe

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Earlier this month I joined Ross McFarlane, a Trustee and Treasurer of Mission International (http://mission-international.org/) on a trip to Ounaminthe in Haiti. Ounaminthe is on the border with the Dominican Republic and we flew to San Domingo before taking the long bus journey across the country to Dajabon on the border. The Dominican Republic though itself a poor country is in stark contrast to Haiti. Everything changes when you cross the border. The lush vegetation with fields of rice, coffee plants and sugarcane give way dramatically to an arid landscape devastated by years of deforestation. It suddenly feels hotter, even in winter, and the atmosphere feels oppressive and tense. The whole business of crossing the border is a minefield of form filling waiting, passport checks, moving through gates, crossing the Massacre River, more forms more checks and all done with the aid of motorcycle taxis carrying any number of people and any load. The whole business was smoothed out, however, and eased through with the guidance of Pastor Rolex Poisson. He met us in San Domingo, saw us through and found us a room in a hotel just over the border.

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This was my second visit but I still wasn’t used to the shock of it. The grinding poverty gets you somewhere beneath the stomach. Visiting people in their homes and hearing some of their stories draws you face to face with the reality of life for so many people, perhaps the majority of people in the world. There was one visit that will haunt me for a very long time. The lady lived in house built from rusting steel panels, odd pieces of plywood and some cardboard. It was no more than 2.0m square with a double bed and no other furniture other than a tiny dresser with a few personal items a small box and some photographs. The interior was lined in places with plastic posters incongruously advertising petrol and perfume. Washing, toileting and cooking happened outside and there was little sign of any food being stored or even utensils. She had children, I don’t recall how many, and a husband who worked long hours in the “ free trade zone” reportedly manufacturing garments for Levi Strauss, Timberland, Tyco and others, no doubt for a pittance. But she didn’t complain or ask for money. Her worry was a neighbour who wanted her house, was determined to have it and threatened to kill her for it. He put a voodou curse on her and she would wake in the morning to find the bodies of dismembered dogs and cats strung around her door. The sense of evil was tangible.  Before travelling I read an article in the Guardian newspaper extolling the virtues of voodou (the soul of the Haitian people), showing how it has had such a bad press and how the Christians had caused so much harm by demonising it. The trouble was, what this woman faced was real demons and raw evil. There was nothing nice about it. She wanted us to pray for her, that the one true God would protect her and her family. For me, it pointed up the great divide between the musings of a privileged liberal tourist, living in the comfort and security of the west, free to pontificate on his take on “indigenous” religion, over against and the gruesome reality on the ground. We did the one thing we could do. We prayed. My colleague led us in prayer, against the forces of evil, for protection of the home and the family and also, following Jesus’ command, for her enemies the ones who had set out to kill her. The prayer was that they too would have their eyes opened and find mercy and forgiveness through Jesus.

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The church building is a large concrete box with a tin roof and arbitrary holes in the walls which let in air and light. It had been partially destroyed and the first team who came out from Scotland, six years ago (a video explain the story is at http://mission-international.org/projects/the-haiti-project/guild-information/), helped rebuild and enlarge it. It is on side street close to the courthouse and busy with stalls cooking and selling food, motorcycles, wheelbarrows, women with spectacular loads on the heads walking with incredible poise, children coming to and from school in smart uniforms and local folk just sitting in the shade chatting, checking mobile phones or simply watching the world go by. The church building is always open and a place to come to sit, and pray or simply lie out on the benches, in the relative cool and calm. There are services at midday and prayer praise services in the evening. On our second night we joined the 400 hundred, or so, people crammed into the building for the second half of a three hour service.  It was loud and riotous with hands in the air and heaving bodies swaying from side to side. It was led by the pastor’s assistant, an otherwise quiet and retiring young man, but here transformed into an astonishing firebrand preacher lifting the people to even greater heights of praise and at the same time bringing them down to almost complete quietness in sincere prayer. The cacophony of sound reminded me of Gaelic singing in the western Isles when it seems that voices come from all over the place rise, join together in remarkable harmonies and ebb as waves of the sea. Here the volume was of another order and pumped up by an energetic four piece band, the drummer with sweet pouring from his brow was crashing his cymbals like it was his last. Every volume was cranked up and the speakers could have come from a U2 concert. Now and again, but not often, it seemed the band were playing the same and sometimes in the same key. Well into the last hour, I was beginning to wilt, I crossed my legs and closed my eyes as if to pray but soon nodded off. I was woken by a young woman gripping my thigh and motioning me to uncross my legs. It was done very graciously and I took the lesson. The crossing of legs in front of an elder is extremely rude and especially disrespectful in God’s house.

The purpose of our visit was to meet with the pastor and elders to discuss plans for the school/church/community building and to finalise the deal for the purchase of the land. The project is the subject of a fundraising effort and you can read about it at http://mission-international.org/projects/the-haiti-project/ . The site itself is narrow and long and restricted on three sides. We were trying to design something that would accommodate a school and a church in an overlapping arrangement and at the centre create a small oasis of light and air and water as a gathering mingling space, linking all the accommodation together. It was good to be able to explain this in detail, with the elders, and talk over the plans in person. We also met a local engineer with experience in construction who would oversee the project. There are still many issues that will have to be resolved: How sure can we be that water sourced form a well on the site will not be contaminated? How much electricity could be generated form solar panels and by generation and the very obvious issue of designing a structure that would withstand an earthquake. We were able to revisit the site in town, to check measurements and another site on the edge of town which may be used as a retreat/health/sports facility. We also visited an America school in Ounaminthe,  set up by an American Missionary Society. It was on a completely different scale but it was comforting to note that the building had been designed with much the same principles. Being able to take a close look at the construction was immensely helpful. Apart from the size the project we are helping with is different in that it will be built by, and owned by, the local church for its work and witness within the community. It will mean that many children who would not otherwise receive an education will be able to participate in that most basic human right.

The most uplifting and most encouraging thing I took away from my visit was the children -the boys and girls walking to and from school carrying an air of promise of confidence and hope for a new future. It was not simply that they were smartly dressed, which they were, but that they walked with their heads held high and with a remarkable confidence that was striking; striking in comparison to the others- the half naked children playing and foraging among the garbage, who cannot share this privilege. The church’s plan then to build a school and, through a child sponsorship scheme, make it possible for children from the poorest of families to open a door into a world of learning and gain a foothold on a ladder of exploration through knowledge and understanding, cheered my little heart. That it would be a school inspired and run by local Christian believers, in the face of unbelievable difficulties, gave me special grounds for optimism.

On the journey back I picked up a copy of Malala Yousafzai’s story to read on the plane from Atlanta. It is a heart-warming tale and chimes so much with what I had been seeing, feeling and had experienced. Her story is shot through with faith, soaked in prayer and punctuated with acknowledgements of God’s hand on her life.  “We human beings don’t realise how great God is. He has given us an extraordinary brain and a sensitive loving heart. He has blessed us with two lips to talk and express our feelings, two eyes which see a world of colour of beauty, two feet which walk on the road of life, two hands to work for us, a nose which smells the beauty of fragrance and two ears to hear the words of love…. I thank Allah for the hardworking doctors, for my recovery and for sending us to this world where we may struggle for our survival… One person bullet hit me. It swelled my brain, stole my hearing and cut the nerve to my left face in the space of a second. And after that one second there were millions of people praying for my life and talented doctors who gave me my body back… I always prayed to God , ‘I want to help people and please help me to do that’” My prayer is that she and hundreds of children in Ounaminthe would one day know Jesus too.

Crawford Mackenzie

woman and barrow

Don’t Follow Your Heart

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dont follow your heart“Don’t Follow Your Heart: God’s Ways Are Not Our Ways”    A book review

I am not a fan of books that are collections of reflections, meditations or devotional aids, the sort of thing that is so packed with anecdotes it is hard to find that thread that supposedly holds the whole thing together. I picked up Jon Bloom’s book  a month ago on the strength of a recommendation. I knew nothing about the author other than that he is connected with the “Desiring God” website http://www.desiringgod.org/ . I flicked through it, but was disappointed and put it down. It felt just like the kind of devotional book I disliked. More recently, however, I took it up again and decided to give it a fair try. I am glad I did. It is superb.

Jon Bloom is not a Dietrich Bonhoeffer, nor a G K Chesterton nor a John Flavell nor a C S Lewis, but he is able to communicate distilled biblical wisdom in an intensely practical and contemporary way.

The theme from the title is the exposure of that hopeless philosophy that says all you have to do is to follow your heart. “It is the creed embraced by millions of people. It’s a statement of faith in one of the great pop-cultural myths of the Western world – a gospel proclaimed in many of our stories, movies and songs. Essentially it’s a believe that your heart is a compass inside you that will direct you to your own true north if you just have the courage to follow it.” But Bloom says that the reality is something else. “Our hearts have sociopathic tendencies” if we actually think about it.

The 31 meditations are simple and short and many people will find them helpful. They are punctuated with pithy quotable sentences:
“When I am grumbling, I have lost touch with reality”
“The heart is a gauge not a guide”
“Your heart only tells you what you want, not where you should go”
“Our hearts cannot save us because what is wrong with our hearts is the heart of the problem”
“We find ourselves fighting an enemy that constantly seeks to alter our perception of reality…it seeks to make the most destructive things look desirable and tantalising”
“Jesus wants us to embrace the true prosperity gospel. He wants us to have treasure in heaven”

I would recommend it to any Christian, any follower of Jesus, who is seriously considering what it means to be a disciple today.

Crawford Mackenzie

In the clearing stands a boxer

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Mez MacConnell  has an interesting and refreshing take on the Tyson Fury furore in his weblog. You can find it at http://20schemes.com/blog/. His main gripe is the way that the world heavyweight champion, suddenly thrust into the spotlight with cameras pointed at him and microphones thrust into his face, has been hung out to dry not just by the media and all the usual social pundits but by evangelical Christians who have taken him to task over his poor theology. MacConnell suspects, as do I, that the problem is not the boxer’s theology but his brashness, his coarseness, his lack of appropriate measured responses. He just says it. He is not bothered by what people think. He is not crippled by the fear of causing offence. He is a boxer and he throws punches. He is not a politician or a preacher. He is not the archbishop of Canterbury. He is simply a very young Christian in need of discipleship, support and prayer. I suspect that the people who didn’t like Tyson Fury won’t like Mez MacConnell either and probably for the same reasons. Yet his voice is one that needs to be heard if the church is to reach beyond its cosy comfortable culture to make disciples of all peoples in a world desperate to hear the good news.

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Bartlett and the Bible

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Glynn Harrison has written an extraordinary article in the new edition of “Solas”  “The long shadow” http://www.solas-cpc.org/wp/solas-resources/solas-magazine-launch/ with a very telling insight into the impact of the sexual revolution on our society, from a Christian world view. It is a challenging critique of how the church has failed to respond to this revolution, been caught napping and generally been unable to speak the good news into it. “Our culture has a good sense of what we are against, but what are we for?”  With some noble and notable exceptions, the church has, in the heat of the debate, been found wanting. There has been a deficit in intellectual integrity, a deficit in creativity, a deficit in articulation and a deficit in humour. In contrast the sexual revolution, which was a revolution of ideas, held all the cards and knew how to present the case: the use of the media, being one of the principal planks of that presentation.

For me, nothing exemplifies this more than “Bartlett and the Bible” a scene from the television series “The West Wing”. Jed Bartlett is the president of the USA and throughout the series he exudes a quality of humanity that somehow you do not expect in a politician, far less in the leader of the “free world”. You cannot but warm to him and take to the way he acts, how he responds to his aids and his family, how he seems to genuinely care for the people and takes the responsibility of his office so seriously and even how he shows his failings. It is very endearing. He comes over as such a genuinely good man that people often say they would vote for him if his name was on the ticket. Many have even tried to persuade Martin Sheen, who is a real person, to do just that to stand for president.

The scene in question can be found at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3CPjWd4MUXs but there is hardly any need to supply the link as you would have to be a stranger to YouTube or social media not to have come across it.  It is a very clever, funny and accomplished display by the president of the United States of America where he wipes the floor with the priggish upstart of a radio presenter, in what has become an iconic put down. At a stroke he exposes the inconsistency, hypocrisy, sheer stupidity, and the censorious and unloving attitude of the conservative biblical right. It’s a great laugh and so often as I have engaged with a facebook discussion on the subject it has been brought in to the thread to prove a point and it does just that. It is the killer punch which finally finishes off the argument. There is no more that can be said. The argument is won and lost.

But take a moment to look at the clip, for it is a perfect example of how the media can be used, not simply to make a point but, to close an argument. Ged Bartlett is a fictional character and the scene has been invented in someone’s mind. The dialogue has been written. It is not a real discussion. In fact it is not a discussion at all more of a monologue in which the president berates the limp presenter with a series of quick fire questions.  He does not allow her space or even the opportunity to answer the questions. The implication is clear. There are no answers. Any fool would see that.  He roundly castigates, viscously mocks and abuses her verbally, in way that would make any misogynist proud. It is a blatant display of merciless bullying by a powerful man, while his staff and advisors stand pathetically bye, sheepishly silent, unwilling or unable to take him to task. It ends when he completes the ritual humiliation by forcing her to stand, as everyone must do, in his presence. It is from every angle an appalling display yet I have heard nothing but applause for it and the way people continue to share the clip shows that they see nothing wrong with that aspect of it.

Leaving the bullying and the abuse to the side, the fact that there is no space for a response, a challenge or even offering answers to the questions, shows how propagandist the piece really is. Given the space and the opportunity, which any fair minded person would, there are very obvious responses that could be made. There are answers to the questions too. Timothy Keller at http://www.thegospelcoalition.org/article/making-sense-of-scriptures-inconsistency gives a perfectly reasoned and convincing response to the charge of inconsistency and others have done so too. But in the media world, these voices are hardly ever heard and it is left to a few to speak out, to challenge the omnidirectional flood of thought, to stick a head above the parapet and face the torrents of abuse and even death threats that come with the territory.

Glynn Harrison’s challenge to the church is simply to tell the good news into this long shadow. “The good news that God has not left us alone. In scripture he not only reveals who he is, but he shows us who we are: he speaks our identity to us.”. That will need resourcefulness, intellectual integrity commitment, creativity and courage, but more than anything, belief in it.

Crawford Mackenzie

The Home Report

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I am quite sure there a lot of excellent ones out there, scrupulously prepared, clearly presented and most importantly relevant and helpful but, the trouble is, I haven’t seen or heard of one yet ….The Home report.  They were introduced by the Scottish Government in 2008 and with so much new legislation they were brought in with every good intention to deal with a perceived problem in the business of buying and selling property. If you are buying or selling a house in Scotland you will have to deal at some point with one. I don’t have the authority to say if it has helped or not. I cannot say if it has made the process of buying or selling easier or cheaper but in terms of helping to establish the actual condition of a property, I doubt if they are really worth the paper they are written on, or Kb’s of memory they take up.

In my experience they are often inaccurate, focus on relative trivialities and most worryingly overlook aspects which can be quite serious. The layout, which has generally been adopted, follows a model suggested by the Scottish Government with diagrams to explain what a roof is and what a window looks like and most of the actual text is taken up with exclusions and list of things that the report is not reporting on. The actual assessment of condition is cursory and simplified to a 1,2 or 3. This, certainly, makes it easy to understand but as far as a judgement on the state of the property is concerned, it is pretty well useless.

The worrying thing is that many prospective buyers place a lot of weight on the Home Report wrongly assuming that it is valuable assessment of the building’s fabric. It is not. I have had many clients who have been frustrated, sometimes angry and often bewildered when they discover, sometimes to their great cost, that serious and obvious issues have been overlooked or simply not spotted. The reports are written in such a way, with so many disclaimers, it is almost impossible to seek redress from the surveyor.

So my advice to the purchaser? Get the report read it and then bin it . If you want to find out about the building and what you might be committing yourself to, get someone who knows, to take the time to survey it, to think through the whole structure in all its aspects, to lift carpets, get under the floors through the hatches and up on the roof.  Be prepared for some disruptive investigations also, if these are called or. In many ways it is just like a medical examination, but one where you would want to know the full story and not simply be told you are a 1, 2 or a 3.

Crawford Mackenzie

roof survey 3

No Fool

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An unusual package came to our island home on Eigg in the Western Isles sometime in the early sixties. It was a package of books. How they arrived there, who brought them or where they came from I do not know. It may have been a gift from someone or it may have been brought by Robert Crawford, a colporteur for the Bible Society who travelled around the islands of Scotland on a heavy Raleigh bicycle, carrying with him a selection of bibles and Christian literature. He often lodged with us while passing our way. There were four hardback titles with missionary themes. Two, “When iron gates yield” and “God holds the key” were written by Geoffrey Bull, a Christian missionary to China who had spent several years close to the Tibetan border before it was joined to the republic. During that time he was arrested, believed to be a spy and spent years in prison where he endured persistent brain washing techniques. The other two were devoted to the life of an American missionary, Jim Elliott who, along with four others was killed by the Huaorani in the Amazonian jungle of Ecuador in 1956.

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This was brought to mind when I heard, earlier this week, of the death of Elizabeth Elliott, who was Jim Elliott’s widow, and the author of “Through Gates of Splendour”  now recognised as an international best seller.  It was Jim Elliott’s story that captivated my young mind and I remember pouring  over the pictures, photographs of the men and their families blissfully happy, the jungle from the air,  the light aircraft, the landing strip, the days making their temporary home on the river bank and the graphic shots of bodies floating facedown in the water after the massacre. I was haunted by the look on the wives faces as they were trying to comprehend the tragic news

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Later, I became enthralled by the story of these young men with their young wives and families and there calling to go to a remote and almost inaccessible part of the Amazonian jungle to tell the good news to the people there, a people untouched by any other civilisation and reported to be extremely hostile and murderous. I followed the preparation, the language study, the careful finding of a suitable landing site, the first forays, the landing, the first promising contact, the radio reporting back to their wives, and then the thrill of meeting a large number of the people who were making their way to where the missionaries had set up camp on the sandy bank of the river. There were great expectations of that meeting…and  then.. silence.IMG_0326

It was soon discovered that all five had been murdered. While the party who came up the river to retrieve the bodies were armed and warning shots were fired into the jungle, the missionaries themselves took with them no means of protection against a possible attack. They had come to bring the good news of Jesus Christ and the thought of being armed would have been anathema to them. They died at the hands of those they had come to reach with the Gospel.  They were true martyrs. I was fascinated by their story and later, as I read it for myself,  by the person and character of Jim Elliott as told by his wife in “The shadow of the Almighty”.

There was something about the man that tugged at my heart. His unbounded joy and delight in life in all its fullness and his love for his Lord. He was a true hero and someone that I, though still some years off being a teenager, wanted to emulate. I can still recall incidents from his life, as Elizabeth Elliott recorded them.  Incidents that showed this joy and excitement even in simple things when he threw himself into some activity, following the wisdom of Solomon:

“Whatever your hand finds to do, do it with all your might”,

when he saw with the hymn writer George Robinson:

 “Heav’n above is softer blue/ Earth around is sweeter green/Something lives in every hue”

and in his most famous quote  based, I am sure on Paul’s “for me to live is Christ to die is gain” :

“He is no fool / Who gives what he cannot keep/To gain/What he cannot lose”

There was something about the driving logic of this truth that was inescapable and impossible to deny. It in itself provided, for me,  a guiding light , a clearing, as I found my way through the jungle of teenage and adult life with its many traps, pitfalls and near disasters. It was a constant reminder that “here we have no lasting city, but we seek the city that is to come.”

IMG_0302The books like almost all of our parent’s possessions were lost, given away or simply thrown out. I’d have loved to have them still and to pour over them once again. But it doesn’t matter, I have them in my memory and am so grateful to Elizabeth Elliott for  recording them for us.

Crawford Mackenzie

What no Lines?

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A Story Retold

ferrals le momtagne

It was a story C S Lewis told. Where, I do not know, although I am sure a trawl would find it. Like so much of what the great master has written and which I never tire of reading, it explained so beautifully and so clearly something that that has eluded my understanding for so long.  He could tell it so that the ordinary guy, me, could understand. But this story had a special significance, because it was about lines and I am a dealer in lines. Ever since, as a toddler, my mother shoved a pencil into my hand and directed it towards a sheet of paper, I have found my hand drawing. The call of the pencil pulls me. There is something about that newly sharpened point, not the boringly uniform cone from a pencil sharpener, but the hand formed chiselled point with its broad and short edges, long bluntness and wild sharpness and the virgin whiteness of blank cartridge which calls out, beckons me to explore, once again a new world of endless possibilities.

tioram

The lines define the space between them and they together tell the story. They are not the thing but only a hint of the thing. It is somewhere else. It is the lift of the wave in that moment before it crashes over the dark rocks, the memory of the sun drenched day high up on the ridge, the secrets hidden in the dark brooding wood, the fear, the love the joy  and the feeling you are trying to express. I earn my living by lines. Most often they are lines that define something which is not yet there. It is something that is yet to be and hoped for. The lines describe in two what becomes a reality in three. Most never get that far but are aborted abandoned and remain as frozen images in a gallery of lost causes. But what joy, when the lines come together with the spaces they define and with the graft and effort become a reality, a building  with real spaces and light and shapes and textures and movement and colour a home, a work place, a teaching space, a worship space, a healing place, a garden.

merton door

She was a woman of great courage, vision, intergrity and compassion. She cared and carried the heavy burden not just of her family but of her people in their plight.  She spoke out against the injustice, committed herself to the long haul and relentless and tirelessly pursued the rightness of the cause.   She put her life on the line. So it was, that her enemies frustrated in every attempt to silence her, finally had her arrested on a false charge and committed to a life in prison with no prospect of release. Fearful that they would have a martyr on their hands, they took great care of her and in her prison, provided for her health and safety, convenience and comfort. They gave special care as she carried her child and in the delivery she was offered the best facilities and support.  The little boy was born into a safe protected world with everything he needed and plenty of stimulus to grow and learn but with one major handicap. He did not see, or breathe or taste the outside world. All he knew was the square of blue above the exercise yard, the square of light  that Oscar Wilde describes in Reading Jail:

“I never saw a man who looked/With such a wistful eye/Upon that little tent of blue/That prisoners call the sky”

As the cheery lad grew his mother wanted to tell him of the outside world and prepare him for the time when he would be released, even if she never saw it herself. She was not an artist but she knew how to draw and with pen and paper she taught him each day, drawing from her memory the animals, flowers, mountains and waters, towns and cities and people at work and play, of explorations and discoveries, and as the boy grow he was totally enthralled in this world she had described and looked forward to the day when he would see it.  He loved the stories and they provided great joy and release in their limited environment. And then it happened. One day as she was drawing and describing a scene, he said something which brought her up with a jolt. It dawned on her that he had not grasped anything she had been teaching him.  She stopped and began to explain that the real world was not pictures, not pencil and ink, lines of paper, not shapes in two dimension but real things. For the first time in his life great sadness creased across his face and a look of terrible disappointment clouded his eyes.

“What…in this real world there are no lines?”

 

Crawford Mackenzie