Charity and the Secret Life of the Dowadowa Seed

The word ‘charity’ today often refers to a single act; or perhaps a shop on a deserted highstreet; or perhaps an organization dedicated to a particular cause.  But it was not always so. Charity is a matter of the heart, not just the hands that reach into a pocket to fish out a contribution and donate.  Charity is a virtue – a way of life.  Our English word ‘charity’ comes from the Latin ‘Caritas’, which was used in the Latin translation of the Bible to translate the Greek word ‘agape’. 

A close and ancient Gaelic word for charity that has made its way into English is ‘cherish’ – ‘looking after someone or something deeply, and loving them’.  Our modern bible translations call ‘charity’, understandably, ‘love’.  Which is why the most famous passage from Paul’s First Letter to the Corinthians in the Authorised Version speaks of ‘Faith, Hope and Charity’ – but the greatest of these is charity, or love.

Christians down the ages have come to see this love as the highest Christian virtue.  As God stooped down in Christ to love humanity, so God’s call to his people was to exercise a love for others that was not about self-gain, but rather about self-giving.  Charity was understood as Christian love in action; a way of being for others that treated them with respect, and had concern for their needs and well-being. We are to be extensions of the love of Christ; abiding in the vine – being the branches.

These connections, of, of course, are embedded in the life of charity.  Buying a certain kind of coffee can mean someone on the other side of the world can afford a goat for their community.  The goat produces milk.  The milk produces cheese.  The goat also produces manure that then nourishes the ground, and makes the crops grow better.  Better food means a longer life for children in the community.  That means stronger communities that can sustain themselves, and thereby improve welfare, education and opportunity.  And all because of one, tiny purchasing decision that you make the next time you go shopping.  The virtue of charity is that it fully regards others.  It does not see them as competitors for material gain; but as fellow human beings in need of compassion and practical support.  It is a kind of love-in-action.

It is sometimes said that the old Indian word – ‘bargain’ – lost its meaning in translation.  In original Hindi, the word refers to a deal in which both parties gain: the seller and the purchaser.  But in our language, ‘bargain’ means the consumer wins, and the seller loses.  Yet charity – the love that cherishes – seeks the welfare of all who are connected.  There is a real sense in which charity should be a bargain. 

To be truly charitable, our motivation to help others comes through a sense of relationship and connection to everyone; and also out of an awareness that what we have is gift.  All of us are dependent on the bounty of God. We are merely the extended charitable branches of Jesus.  Christ’s extensity into the world.  We are connected to the one who longs for those branches to reach out to others; to feed and support; sustain and shelter; offer life and hope where there is only drought and despair.

Some years ago, I read the following advertisement in a daily newspaper, which reminded me of the importance of making such connections:

‘Why not buy a tree for Africa as your gift to the world this year.  For the same £3 a foot you paid for a Christmas tree, you can but a tree for Hope for Africa…which is planting thousands of trees in the [most] fragile areas, providing income and nutrition for local people…you could buy a dowadowa tree, which grows to 45 foot.  It is known as ‘the tree that is blessed by God’, because it provides so much…its seeds are used to make soumbala balls, a local delicacy that women sell.  Young roasted pods makes sweets in times of plenty, and are dried in times of famine.  Leaves feed the cattle; the twigs make toothpaste; the gum hardens earth floors and can be used to glaze pottery; the flowers treat leprosy; the roots treat epilepsy, and can also be made into strings for musical instruments; the bark is used for tanning, for plastering huts and for embalming – other parts of the tree are used in marriage, childbirth and initiation rituals…’

Like the trees, and like the vine of Jesus, we are asked to nourish and sustain the world through our connection to Christ.  As Jesus says, ‘abide in me, and I will abide in you’.  And our bargain with God is that we both give and receive by being the branches of his vine.  But to be his branches in the world, we have to make connections:  that touch others with his love; that raise people out of poverty; that bring hope in darkness; that offers life and faith where there is despair.   ‘I am the vine; you are the branches’, says Jesus.  Or perhaps, Jesus speaking to us says, ‘be the dowadowa seed’ – such a small thing – that can make the world of difference to a community. 

The Harvest Within

This weekend, churches will be awash with tinned food, packets of cereals and various displays of local produce.  Here at Cuddesdon we have the usual Harvest Supper on Saturday night (tickets still available...and ably cooked by our very own Honorary Curate, the Revd. Prof. Mark Chapman)...and then the Harvest Service on Sunday.  Across the country, improbably large marrows will jostle for position with baskets of fruit; loaves of bread will vie with sheaves of wheat.  Brownies, Scouts, Guides and Guides will parade, and the clergy will try to say something sensible about Harvest Festival, a curiously popular service, despite the fact that people’s connection with food today is mostly with supermarkets and fast food restaurants, and hardly ever directly with the land that provides the food. (A pity, this; and perhaps especially this year we needs to pray for and support our farmers who are having the toughest of times, truly). 

Although there is a sense in which harvest has always been celebrated (Lammas and Rogationtide come to mind) the modern fondness for harvest is traceable to the Revd Robert Hawker, a Cornish priest, who began the new services we now recognise as ‘harvest festival’ in 1843, at his parish in Morwenstow.  It was Hawker who, building on earlier Saxon and Celtic Christian customs, began to decorate his church with home grown produce, a practice that has now become widespread for a hundred and fifty years.  Throughout the Victorian era, the festival was steadily embellished and romanticised, probably to act as a counterweight to the growing influence of the industrial revolution and secularisation.

However, although the twentieth century has seen the observation of Harvest Festival continue to flourish, the churches’ understanding of what and for whom the festival is for has altered considerably.  The sixteenth century Book of Common Prayer Collect seems to assume that God is wholly responsible for the weather, and for the abundance of produce.  The prayer petitions God accordingly. 

But in more recent times, the festival has shifted in its cultural and theological moorings.  Modern collects place very little emphasis on God as the fickle conjurer of weather, together with his shy husbandry of crops, fruit and livestock.  Instead, contemporary prayers for harvest stress the political and social mandates that issue from a focus on food and provision in a world that is wracked by inequality and injustice.  A recent Christian Aid prayer captures the sentiments well enough:

‘We stand before you, Lord, with hands wide open, ready to receive you.  We bring before you, Lord, our modest gifts, like tiny seeds, not knowing what fruits you may bring out of them.  We wait before you, Lord, asking that our hands and gifts, offered in your service, will make a difference to the world beyond all our imaginings.  In the name of Jesus, who once was weak, but now is exalted.  Amen.’

In the post-war era, the emphasis in contemporary harvest festivals has moved progressively away from thankfulness for ‘our’ abundance, to one of concern for those whose experience of provision is one of scarcity, or even outright starvation.  The festival has, in other words, become slowly but radically politicised.  Personally, I consider this to be an important and welcome development.  This subtle evolution relocates the festival more securely in the kinds of cadences expressed in the Old Testament, and perhaps especially the Torah.  Harvest is a time to consider those on the margins and beyond.  Those for whom the leftovers, waste and the scraps are enough, or at least necessary.

But there is another sense in which harvest is beginning to see its’ meaning evolve, even if its symbolic forms and liturgies remain apparently unchanged.  In thinking about fruits and seeds, and taking a rather more post-modern turn, it is possible to understand the festival as being something rather more personal.  In sum, the celebration of the festival is increasingly concerned with the harvest within.  The Collect quoted earlier shows that modern writers are now very much alive to the inner spiritual aspects of Harvest Festival.  In talking about fruit and seeds, offering and growth, life and potential, one can see a simple ‘snapshot’ that captures the full range of theological shifts in human consciousness.  The God who provides weather and produce (pre-modern); the God who is concerned with the distribution of these resources (political and modern); the God who is concerned with the individual, and our inner state or response (post-modern).

Increasingly, the cadence of harvest reflects the spirit of the age.  It looks in three distinct directions: to God the paternal provider; to God as an agent of social and political transformation; and to God as the therapeutic healer, who begins his work deep inside the self, not just deep inside the soil.  But perhaps this is no bad thing?  Ultimately, Harvest Festival calls us to be thankful for what we have been given, acknowledge the giver, and above all, give to others in return.  The quality of the harvest within is always judged by what is given out.  Jesus once said, in a waspish swipe at his opponents, that true religion is not about the seeds or roots we can claim in our lineage.  Faith is, in the end, a matter of the fruit we cultivated and shared, not the seedlings we were given.

Almost There

After just over a year of building, we are almost there!  I am pleased to say that work is progressing extremely well in Harriet Monsell House, and that we hope to have use of the new building very shortly.  The Sisters will hopefully be able to move in later during October, which we greatly look forward to.  This is a major development in the life of the community, and we will be celebrating the opening of the new Lecture Theatre in Harriet Monsell House on Saturday 3 November.  The Bishop of Gloucester, as Chair of Governors, is going to give the inaugural lecture to commemorate the 350 anniversary of the Book of Common Prayer, entitled “Incomparable Yet Insufficient - The Book of Common Prayer Today".  This event will also include the conferral of Honorary Fellowships on the Revd. Robbin Clark, Mr. Michael Young and the Revd. Prof. Mark Chapman.  The afternoon will conclude with a Sung Choral Evensong in the church, led by the Choir of Trinity College, Oxford; and then the day will be rounded off with the annual Village Firework Display.  The Edward King Chapel has been progressing well too, and we remain delighted with the quality of the workmanship and the appearance of the building.  However, it is a complex project – a stunning space for worship, as well as a highly unusual design and shape.  We are now looking at dedicating and blessing the chapel at the commencement of Hilary Term in January 2013.

In formation and training, we are often conscious of how we are all work in progress.  And that what God does with each and every one us is never fully completed.  But in being built up – as individuals and as a body – we are also asked to be ready to serve.  And that is what these buildings will do in a few weeks.  Become ready to serve.  I keep a door stop in my study on the fireplace.  A reminder that we are always to be open to God; and always to be hospitable and open to the world.  The doors of the new Chapel and new Education Centre are now fixed.  May they, like us, always be open, and ready to serve.