Through the barred windows

By Alex Peden (From Seeds October 2021)

Prisons are a blind spot for many churches: a window that’s just too difficult to look into.

On the one hand, being a Christian is all about forgiveness and fresh starts. On the other, we can all think of terrible crimes which we ourselves may feel demand punishment. We wouldn’t want to be vengeful, nor fall into the trap of being over-sentimental and naïve. However, by ignoring the issue, might we be tacitly accepting the ‘who cares, just lock ‘em up’ overtures of some sections of our society? It seems to me that we have a responsibility to know more about our prisons.

Very recently at a Zoom social, I learnt that my assumption, that our own church had nothing to do with prisons, is wrong. Members of our church, not long ago, had volunteered to serve refreshments to prisoners and to be visitors at Saughton prison (HMP Edinburgh). Others have served as prison chaplains.

I wanted to bust other assumptions I may have made about prisons. That’s why I was glad to speak to John Nonhebel, the newly appointed Executive Director of Prison Fellowship Scotland. PF Scotland is a non-denominational charity that works alongside prison chaplains to provide opportunities for prisoners to discover the Christian faith, as well as reflecting on the impacts of their crimes on individuals and communities, through a process of ‘restorative justice’. ‘It involves Bible study and exploring faith with the prisoners… it’s good fun,’ John told me.

A little to my dismay, soon into our conversation John was confirming some things I had feared were true: Firstly, Scottish prisons are ‘bursting’, currently with around 7,000 people. ‘We lock up more people than any other country in Western Europe,’ John said. I checked this fact and indeed Scotland appears to have a higher rate of incarceration per capita than any other Western European country.

He also confirmed that serious mental health issues are rife amongst prisoners. Prison chaplains are having to work hard on suicide prevention, with an increasing number of deaths in custody. The problem is compounded by drugs: large numbers of inmates are there for drug-related offences, and the infiltration of drugs into prisons is an increasing problem.

Although all this was difficult to hear, I was at least very glad to be speaking to someone with first-hand knowledge of the system. John has devoted his life to working in the charitable sector, being strongly motivated by Jesus’ example of bringing good news to the poor and exploited, something he did for 20 years in India.

Frustratingly for him, he came into his current role at PF Scotland just three months before the first Covid lockdown, which severely limited contact with prisoners (as well as cutting off inmates from a raft of support services). However, he is greatly looking forward to getting back ‘behind the walls’ very soon.

Why is our imprisonment rate so high, I wanted to know? Is it tougher sentencing? His belief was that the Scottish Government is not properly looking at alternative solutions which he believes are ‘way more successful’. According to him, other European countries are achieving more by treating crime as a public health issue, with low crime and decreasing rates of imprisonment in Portugal being just one example.

The vast majority of prisoner are men, but something I learnt from John was how much harder prison life can be for women. ‘They are very isolated, and they have very few visits. The mental health issues are worse for women.’ For one thing, the pain of separation from their children and families can be more acute.

Many have spent their lives against a backdrop of physical and mental abuse. A recent study showed that 80 per cent of female prisoners had a history of serious head injury. ‘There are too many women in the prison system at the moment. It’s about 400 whereas it should be 40,’ John said.

John is hopeful about an initiative of the Scottish Prison Service (SPS) for Custodial Care Units in which groups of no more than around 30 women are housed together in a supportive open prison environment.

“some prisoners have done horrendous things, but the majority are people who have maybe made just one mistake”

I wanted to know what ordinary people can do to help. ‘Educate yourself, find out more,’ he said. Also ask your MSPs ‘why they aren’t looking at alternative solutions’. However, John’s own focus is to get back working with prisoners and running courses. That’s where he feels he can do his best work.

PF Scotland recruits new volunteers every year, who often come from churches in the local areas of many of Scotland’s 15 prisons. PF Scotland provides volunteers with opportunities for exploring faith with small groups of prisoners or helping to run a course called ‘Sycamore Tree’ on restorative justice (named for the tree Zacchaeus climbed to see Jesus coming), where prisoners reflect on the suffering their crimes have caused others. This is a scheme the SPS is keen to expand. Full training is provided for all programmes by PF Scotland, even for letter writing to prisoners, where a balance is needed between safety, anonymity, and keeping the communication meaningful for the prisoners.

John was upbeat in his message that ‘God is at work’ in Scottish prisons, and lives are genuinely ‘being transformed’. And as we finished our interview, John said something to make me think: ‘They’re just like us you know.’ Yes, some prisoners have done horrendous things, but the majority are people ‘who have maybe made just one mistake’.

Focussing on prisons might be more like looking into a mirror than a window – but having started to look, I want to find out more.

New ways of worshipping

By Rev Fiona Bennett (From Seeds October 2021)

Throughout October, we continue to offer Sunday worship online every week, and in-building on the first and third Sundays (when there is also communion).

In-building worship no longer requires advanced booking, but Track & Trace is taken on the door, seats are still distanced and masks are required to be worn throughout the service. Junior Church is also in-building on the 1st and 3rd Sundays. [Note slightly different arrangements on Sunday 10th.]

SUNDAY 3RD OCTOBER

We are celebrating Harvest. During the service we will join with churches across the world as we support the work of Christian Aid (in particular their campaign to support Afghan Refugees www.christianaid.org.uk/get-involved/campaigns/stand-afghanistan) through financial giving, campaigning and praying.

As part of the service, we will also join with the Young Christian Climate Network in making paper prayer boats to join their collection being carried from St Ives to Glasgow, and strengthen the voice calling for action from those meeting at COP 26 (www.christianaid.org.uk/pray/prayer-chain). As a first Sunday in the month, people are invited to share in worship online and in the building. There will be Junior Church activities in the building and communion.

SUNDAY 10TH OCTOBER

How will this work? For those who are worshipping online and in the building, we will share the same worship activities from the start of the service at 11am (including the christening) until the Bible reading and sermon.

Those online will then hear the reading and sermon while those in the building will share round tables in theme-related craft activities suitable for all ages. After the sermon, the craft activities will end and everyone online and in the building will share together for the rest of the service.

Seats in the building will be around tables to enable the crafts. The seats are open to all but are limited by capacity, so for this service advanced booking in advance is essential. (Rachel will send out an Eventbrite link the week before.)

SUNDAY 17 OCTOBER

We are marking Mental Health Sunday with Maxwell Reay preaching. This will also be a service with in-building worship and communion.

Mike Holroyd is preaching on Sunday 24th and Laurence Wareing on Sunday 31st.

SINGERS

For the next few months, we are experimenting with having pairs of singers lead our hymn singing in the building on the 3rd Sunday. This is to address the challenge of having live singing as part of worship that streams well online (people in the building singing with masks on is not very clear for people at home).

Getting the right blends of voices to sound good online may take a bit of time but, fortunately, Katrina Hadland has offered to do the coordinating.

If you are a confident singer and interested to be part of a singing pair, please drop her an email (katrina.hadland@augustine.org.uk) and she will try to work out good blends of voices and dates!

Protecting our planet against plastic

By Katrina Tweedie (From Seeds July/August 2021)

Katrina Tweedie offers ideas for the first five days of AUC’s Plastic-Free July. Other ideas will follow in AUC mailings.

Nick Fewings on Unsplash

1 July
Plastic assessment: make a quick note of any plastic in your ordinary bin and in your plastic recycling bin. Empty your plastic recycling bin. The aim is to keep it empty! Put your note somewhere visible so you can look back on it at the end of the month

2 July
Disentangling ourselves from the web of plastic waste is very challenging so let’s help each other. If you have any ideas or questions, email me at katrina.tweedie@augustine.org.uk. I will put them into Not Notices and other people could respond. For example, I can’t think of a way to get round the plastic bin liner we use, especially as we have an outside bin shared with the other three flats in the stair. Any suggestions?


3 July
The obvious (but easily forgotten):

  • take your own shopping bag
  • take your own coffee cup
  • take your own refillable water bottle

Put a reminder on the inside of your door/by your purse.
Watch the short video “Plastic-Free July – It’s as easy as this!” at www.plasticfreejuly.org/resources/videos/

4 July
Only 9% of plastics from recycling bins are recycled. The remaining 91%:

  • is sent to poorer countries without proper regulated means of recycling it (but all plastic sent by the UK is certified as ‘recycled’)
  • is put into landfill where it leaches out causing environmental degradation, releasing methane and synthetic oestrogen
  • becomes litter, which kills animals, for example by strangulation or ingestion
  • disintegrates into microplastics, which are ingested by living creatures that are part of our food chain
  • is incinerated, a process which is carbon intensive, releasing toxins

AND plastic can only be recycled a limited number of times (most plastic between once and three times). So, my virtuous fleece made from recycled plastic solves nothing! Plastic will ALWAYS end up as waste.

Recycling plastic is not sustainable.

Watch “UK plastic waste being dumped and burned in Turkey” – a BBC video at www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-57139474

5 July
Psalm 104: 24 – 30

How many are your works, O Lord!
In wisdom you made them all;
the earth is full of your creatures.
There is the sea, vast and spacious,
teeming with creatures beyond number – living things both large and small.
There the ships go to and fro,
and the leviathan, which you formed to frolic there.

By 2050, we could have more plastic than fish (by weight) in the sea.

The unconditional love that surrounds us

By Rev Fiona Bennett (From Seeds July/August 2021)

Ancient Greek had a number of different words which we translate into English today as “love”, but they all had slightly different meanings.

One of those words was “Agape”. (It’s pronounced “a-ga-pay”.) This is the love God has for us and which God desires we have for each other – or so it suggests in 1 John 4:7 (“let us love (agape) one another for love (agape) is of God”).

This agape love is an unconditional love; it persists regardless of all circumstance, and is more than a feeling – it is an utter commitment to seek the best for another. No matter what we do or feel, God’s agape love for us and for each and all life is unshakable, beyond breakable.

Agape love is also more than a benign affirmation; it is an active state in which the Spirit moves and works. Sometimes, truly seeking the best for ourselves or another in the sense of agape love, can be pretty tough, but it is the foundation of being and building God’s Realm on earth.

Coming out of lockdown is hitting many people hard. We battled through the pandemic, but the new normal is still shifting.

 We are all changed people, and many are weary. Just as people who travel in countries with great poverty often find their biggest culture shock is coming home (to wasted clean water and supermarkets full of food), so our arrival back into the new normal may well be trickier and more traumatic than girding ourselves to cope with the crisis.

Whatever is going on in our lives and world, it is helpful to remember and trust that whatever we feel and worry about, God’s unshakable and unconditional agape love surrounds and fills all things; it is for us, and is longing to be released through us towards ourselves, others and all life on earth.

“agape love is an invitation to find hope and resilience even in the most difficult times”

In the same passage in 1 John 4, the writer also says: “Perfect love casts out fear.” I think choosing to focus and trust God’s agape love is an invitation to find hope and resilience even in the most difficult times, which help to overcome our deepest fear.

Junior Church Gathers

By Tamsin Kilgour (From Seeds June 2021)

Great excitement this month as, on 9th May, several Junior Church families gathered in AUC for the Sunday service. This was the first chance we’d had to all be together since Advent (albeit in socially distanced, face-masked family groups). The theme of that week’s reading was Love. Here’s a selection of our children’s creations.

During June we will continue to provide weekly activity sheets linked to the lectionary readings. As we move towards the school holidays we will be having some activities for families to do outside, as well as those at home.

AUC Celebrates Pride Virtually

OUR TRIBE – THURSDAY 3RD JUNE

Our Tribe will be celebrating Pride Season during our next session on Thursday 3rd June. The session will open at 7.20pm and start at 7.30pm. We’d love if you want to join us in painting your face or wearing bright colours.

We’ll hear from Revd Dr. Ana Ester, who is an ordained clergy of the Metropolitan Community Church of Belo Horizonte, Brazil. She is a member of the Global Interfaith Network Latin America and of the American Academy of Religion.

AUC PRIDE SERVICE – SUNDAY 20TH JUNE

We are delighted to have Revd Elder Pat Bumgardner as our guest preacher on Sunday 20th June.

Pat is the Senior Pastor of the Metropolitan Community Church of New York, where she has served in multiple capacities for the past 40 years. She is the founder of the Sylvia Rivera Memorial Food Pantry and Sylvia’s Place, both housed at MCCNY. Named for the late civil rights leader and Mother of the Queer Rights Movement in the US, Sylvia Rivera’s Place serves as an emergency shelter and drop-in site dedicated to providing safe space and food for homeless LGBTQI youth.

Rev Elder Pat also serves as the Executive Director of the Global Justice Institute, coordinating and overseeing the global justice efforts of MCC. Her current focus involves not only local church efforts, but projects with activists in Kenya and Uganda, Romania and Russia, Honduras, Brazil, Jamaica, and Mexico.

FURTHER INFORMATION

All are very welcome at both Pride events. If you don’t usually receive emails with the details for services and Our Tribe please contact centre.manager@augustine.org.uk

Find out more about MCCNY at www.mccny.org

If you would like to donate to the Global Justice Institute, visit donatenow.networkforgood. org/1435416

Friendship in the Midst of Division

David Townsend reviews ‘Apeirogon’ by Colum McCann  (From Seeds June 2021)

This is a quite extraordinary book. It’s both a novel and a real-life drama. It’s about two friends: Rami Elhanan and Bassam Aramin.

Rami is a Jewish Israeli and Bassam a Muslim Palestinian – men on opposite sides of the age-old conflict at the centre of this month’s Seeds.

But Rami and Bassam have several things in common: they’re both fathers; they have both lost young daughters (Rami’s daughter to a suicide bomber and Bassam’s to a rubber-coated bullet fired by a trigger-happy member of the Israeli Defence Force); and they are both members of the Parents’ Circle* – an organisation set up by the bereaved families of both Israelis and Palestinians.

Rami and Bassam have dedicated their lives to telling and retelling their stories to whoever will listen. They don’t hold back any punches; neither do other members of their families in describing their own experiences.

It’s a book that is at once both raw and beautiful. In writing it, Colum McCann doesn’t sugar-coat their lived experience. Indeed, he describes the day-to-day experience of Rami and Bassam both within their own communities, and as they engage in the realities of life in Israel, the West Bank and beyond.

It’s a book of both devastating loss and grief, and of hope. It’s stark and devoid of sentimentality, yet it depicts the friendship and fraternity that arises when two men, and their families, lay aside all that would separate them, and unite to tell their stories – stories that need to be heard, both by those in their divided communities, and by you and I living in peace and comfort some 2,500 miles from their homeland.

Like many of the Biblical writers,

Colum McCann has woven real life – the lived experience of Rami and Bassam – into the story he tells. But the central characters are real and the central events happened.

Today, the characters might bear different names but the events repeat themselves.

Peace building

By Rev Fiona Bennett (From Seeds June 2021)

As I write this (mid-May) the news from Israel & Palestine is not good. A powder keg of tension has been ignited and violence is breaking out all over the land.

Years of frustration are being played out and people of all ages are dying. I wonder what the world would look like today if, back in the 1940s, we and other countries had welcomed – en masse – holocaust survivors with open arms and hearts?

I am reminded of a line in the Jesus’ Prayer we use each week “forgive us the hurts we absorb from one another”: the unchallenged legacies of fear and hurt we allow to continue to shape our thinking and acting; the legacy of protecting self-interest; the legacy of grief; the legacy of tyranny and oppression.

Unchallenged, they shape our perceptions and actions through which we continue to hurt others, ourselves, and the earth itself.

Changing our perceptions is at the heart of what Jesus and John called repentance – turning around. And repentance is often connected with forgiveness.

There has been a lot of energy throughout Christian history explaining how we can find forgiveness from God. I really do not think God has a problem with forgiveness, humans do.

And in forgiveness I do not mean the unhelpful idea of simply wiping out the past as if we cannot learn anything; forgiveness is the power to let go of the hold which past experiences and perceptions have on us without denying their reality, so we can make different choices in the present and future.

This is walking the way of peace which is a hard road for humanity everywhere but, as Jesus showed, which is the path of life for us all.

Did Jesus invent the ‘new normal’?

By Rev Fiona Bennett (From Seeds May 2021)

The theme of this year’s Scottish Mental Health Arts and Film Festival is ‘Normality?’.

The festival is running 3-23 May with a mainly online program, but also including a few live outdoor exhibitions (in Renfrewshire). You can find out more at www.mhfestival.com.

The theme was inspired by many lockdown conversations about ‘getting back to normal’ or ‘creating a new normal’. It raises questions about what we perceive as normal. And whether much of what was assumed in pre-lockdown as ‘normal’ was – for people who live with anxiety, illness or disability – often damaging to mental health. Is it possible to shape a new normal in our society that is inclusive and enabling for all?

The festival includes the dates of Mental Health Awareness Week Scotland, which is 10-16 May. This year the theme is ‘Nature and the Environment’, which has been shown to be a huge factor and tool for supporting our mental health throughout lockdown. (www. mentalhealth.org.uk/campaigns/ mental-health-awareness-week ) (See p.5.)

The experience of lockdown and losses brought about by the pandemic have certainly raised everyone’s awareness that our mental health requires as much attention and care as our physical health. This would not have been a new idea to Jesus, for all of his healing stories are about more than physical events; they involve people being restored to themselves and to their communities.

Was Jesus trying to shape a new normal in the world in which he lived, one that was inclusive and enabling for all?

I hope the opportunities to learn and connect this May through all these Mental Health events can inspire us to treasure and care for the gift of our mental health, and consider how we can shape a new normal world which creates space and support for all.

Open Doors, Helping Hands

From Seeds April 2021

Augustine supports Open Doors Meals at the Grassmarket Community Project (GCP) financially and through volunteers. Kathleen Ziffo has been a volunteer with them for 26 years. Katrina Tweedie asked Kathleen to tell her more.

HOW DID OPEN DOORS MEALS START?

Over 25 years ago, a small project for feeding homeless people one evening a week was started by ladies of Greyfriars Kirk Guild in their Kirk House in Candlemaker Row. Divinity Students living in the Grassmarket, and some veterinary students, also assisted. Twenty to thirty people would come and we brought in (and eventually made on the premises) soup, sausage rolls/sandwiches and home-baking.

Around that time, people in Augustine, Greyfriars and St Columba’s by-the-Castle looked at what the local churches could do together to help in the area. We carried out a joint parish visitation, knocking on peoples’ doors and asking what the community needed. We discovered that there were far more people living around the area in flats than we had imagined and that there were homeless people going hungry, and others in need of support.
Since then, it has developed hugely, first with the appointment of a field worker, and then with the establishment of the more ambitious Grassmarket Community Project, which also offers services such as skills development including weaving and woodworking.

GCP now serves a much wider group of people, addressing lack of opportunities, mental health issues and poverty, as well as homelessness. It is the Open Doors Meals part of GCP that our congregations supports.

WHAT DOES YOUR ROLE INVOLVE?

I used to head up a cooking team but in the last three or so years GCP has employed a chef for their café (and cooking classes) and he now prepares two course meals for our members. Volunteers set up, heat the food, serve it, chat to members and then clean up.

WHAT OTHER ROLES ARE THERE?

While the meals are eaten, others advise on benefits and other financial matters, hairdressers cut members’ hair, and vets help with pets. Folk might like to get more involved with other aspects of the volunteering work of GCP and can contact GCP direct.

WHO VOLUNTEERS?

There are people from our three local churches, from other churches, some with no church affiliation, students and people of all ages. Everyone mucks in together. We are all of us, volunteers and people being served, called “members”.

Della, Francis, Robert and I have been more recent helpers, as were the late Brian Teyhan and Zandra Russell; and among the earlier volunteers was the late Agnes Nisbet.

HOW OFTEN DO YOU VOLUNTEER?

Once a month nowadays (prior to the pandemic).

WHAT DO YOU MOST ENJOY ABOUT IT?

I enjoy producing a meal for people, seeing people enjoying the food and socializing with the folk attending. Most people are very appreciative – so I like that – and I like being able to chat to people when we have time.
Most of the people who come in are pretty nice people. There’s such a variety of people too. . . foreigners with low incomes, occasionally a few asylum seekers, people with mental health issues or dependency problems, people who are socially excluded. Anyone is welcome to come for a free meal.

ANYTHING YOU DON’T ENJOY?.

Team leaders are meant to be in first to set up tables, crockery and cutlery in the main hall, but if prior events are running late it can mean a real rush. And it can be quite strenuous moving furniture quickly from different parts of
the building!

HOW DOES AUC DECIDE HOW MUCH TO CONTRIBUTE FINANCIALLY?

Up to fifty meals produced one day a week over about 50/52 weeks cost around £2,400 in 2019; and so each of our three local church agreed to donate approximately £800 each.

WHAT BENEFITS DO YOU THINK OPEN DOORS MEALS BRING?

Many people consider it a safe place to come. It provides opportunity for socialising, friendship and companionship to people who have difficulty accessing that.

AND DURING THE PANDEMIC?

Work has continued in whichever form is possible at the time, whether it’s delivering food to members of the community project and others, or giving out ‘take away’ meals. The day and time of the meal has changed; and the members helping and leading have changed quite a lot, too.

CONTACT DETAILS FOR THE GRASSMARKET COMMUNITY PROJECT:

  • Online: info@grassmarket.org
  • Phone: 0131 225 3626
  • Text 07860 021 262