Led into Mystery

John De Gruchy

Description

Led into Mystery is an unanticipated sequel to John de Gruchy's book Being Human: Confessions of a Christian Humanist. It was prompted by the untimely and tragic death of his eldest son, Steve, in February 2010, and the questions this posed about the meaning of life and death from the perspective of Christian faith.

Informations

• Publié par: Hymns Ancient & Modern
• Date de parution: 28 juillet 2014
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9780334049869
• Langue: English

Extrait

Led into Mystery
Led into Mystery
Faith seeking answers in life and death
John W. de Gruchy
© John W. de Gruchy 2013
Published in 2013 by SCM Press
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British Library Cataloguing in Publication data
A catalogue record for this book is available
from the British Library
978-0-334-04736-0
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CPI Group (UK) Ltd, Croydon
IN MEMORY OF
Stephen Mark de Gruchy
16 November 1961–21 February 2010
Dedicated to all
who knew and loved Steve
who have supported us in our grief
who share our memories and our hopes
Contents
Acknowledgments
Notes
Prologue: The Day Steve Died
1 Echoes of Mystery
2 Walking Through the Door
3 The God Question
4 The Human Enigma
5 The Hope Within Us
Epilogue: Dying We Live
Indexes of Biblical References
Indexes of Names
Indexes of Subjects
Acknowledgments
I am grateful to the members of my family and the many friends who have supported me during the writing of this book, especially those associated with the Volmoed Community in Hermanus of which Isobel and I have been members for the past decade. A number of friends and colleagues have also kindly read either sections or the whole of the manuscript, or discussed various issues along the way: Alex Boraine, Judy and Julian Cooke, George Ellis, William Everett, Timothy Gorringe, Lyn Holness, Wolfgang Huber, Bernard Lategan, Larry Rasmussen, Mark Solms, Robert Steiner, John Suggit, Wentzel van Huyssteen, Robert Vosloo, Graham Ward, and members of my ‘Transforming Traditions’ research group. I have benefitted greatly from their encouragement and comments. Isobel has, as always, been constant in her support, but even more in this instance; she has not only carefully read and commented on the text, but also contributed several of her poems. I am grateful to SCM Press in London for agreeing to publish, to Natalie Watson, the Academic Editor, who has ably piloted the project, and to my very helpful editor, Rebecca Goldsmith. I also thank the National Research Foundation of South Africa (NRF), the University of Cape Town, and the Stellenbosch Institute for Advanced Study (STIAS), for their ongoing support for my work.
John de Gruchy
Volmoed, Hermanus
Advent: Season of Hope
2012
Notes Unless otherwise indicated, all biblical references and quotations are from the New Revised Standard Version of the Bible. JB refers to the Jerusalem Bible, AV to the Authorized or King James Version. I have not used the prefix “St” when referring to those commonly acknowledged as saints, thus “paul” refers to St Paul, etc., References to God are, for stylistic purposes only, in the masculine, otherwise I have sought to be inclusive in my use of language. Where I have not directly qouted a source but have been particularly dependent on one, I have provided a reference for readers who would like to follow up the discussion.
Prologue
The Day Steve Died
The lack of mystery in our modern life means decay and impoverishment for us. A human life is of worth to the extent that it keeps its respect for mystery .
Dietrich Bonhoeffer 1
The work of mourning is the cost of the work of remembering, but the work of remembering is the benefit of the work of mourning.
Paul Ricœur 2
Your favour had set me on a mountain fastness,Then you hid your face and I was put to confusion.
Psalm 29 3
Hope may be questionable but, if it is to remain hope, it can only take the form of a question.
Nicholas Lash 4
Our eldest son, Steve, tragically died in a river accident on Sunday 21st February 2010. He was 48 years old and, at the time of his death, a professor of theology at the University of Kwa-Zulu Natal in Pietermaritzburg. I vividly recall that Sunday afternoon when Marian his wife phoned to say that he was missing, feared drowned, in the Mooi River at the foothills of the Drakensberg while tubing with his son David. I was busy in my workshop putting the finishing touches to a Paschal candlestick for the chapel at Volmoed, the community near Hermanus in the Western Cape, where Isobel and I now live. Turned from pieces of a camphor tree that had blown down on Volmoed during a storm, the candlestick was in anticipation of the coming celebration of Easter, when Christians declare that ‘Christ is risen’, and listen to Paul’s confident assertion that ‘death has lost its sting’.
The next day Isobel and I flew to Durban, more than 1500 kilometres away and then travelled on to Pietermaritzburg to be with Marian and our grandchildren Thea, David and Kate. Early the next morning, together with Suellen Shay, a close friend of the family who had travelled with us, I was taken by another family friend, Dan Le Cordeur, on a further two-hour journey by car into the Natal Midlands to the remote area where the Mooi River winds its way through the grandeur of the surrounding hills and bushes. Tony Balcomb, a colleague of Steve’s, who owned the property, met us, and soon we were descending to the place where Steve had last been seen by David. The sun was beating down on the austere beauty of the valley and the river, though subsiding, was still in full spate from the recent rains. I was taken to the spot, a rocky outcrop in the rapids, where it was feared Steve had been trapped under the fast-flowing water. The moment I arrived and sat beside the river I knew instinctively that Steve was lying in the water somewhere deep in front of me. I was inconsolable. I do not know how long I sat there and wept. Suellen and Tony, some distance away, wept with me but gave me the space and time I needed. I lost sense of the time, but it must have been more than an hour later that we returned up the hillside to the chalet from where Steve and David had set out that fateful Sunday. Along the way, I frequently stopped, crying out aloud in protest at his death.
Steve’s body was recovered from the river the next day, when I returned to that tragic place, this time with Isobel, Jeanelle, Steve’s sister, who had arrived from England the day before, Thea, his daughter, who was not with the family on the day he drowned, and James Anderson, Marian’s cousin, who had led the search for Steve’s body. It was now three days after the accident had occurred. But was that the end of Steve, I asked myself? I wanted so desperately to believe that in some way he was still present with us. But was I so traumatized by his sudden death that my sense of his presence and my inarticulate words addressed to him at the rapids were a delusion? Certainly, they were triggered off by the chemistry of my brain, programmed as it is to help us handle trauma. But was it all a delusion? Deep in the recesses of my mind, my confidence in the Easter acclamation came under attack. Such convictions, science and reason told me, are complex but illusory constructions of the brain to help us cope with tragedy.
Most Thursdays I lead the service of Holy Communion in the Volmoed chapel. The Paschal candlestick I was making the day Steve died now stands next to the altar with a small plaque in his mem-ory, its large candle alight as a symbol of Easter hope. One of my tasks is to offer a short meditation on a biblical passage, usually related in some way to our life together in community or the wider society. These are then sent by email to a circle of friends who have requested them. They are also posted on the Volmoed website. When we returned to Volmoed from Steve’s funeral in Pietermaritzburg and the memorial service, which followed shortly after in Cape Town, I was determined to give the meditation the following week as usual. I also decided to continue doing so each week, not just in fulfilment of my responsibility but also as a way of sharing something of the journey on which Isobel and I were now embarked. It was not easy, especially those first few weeks. After some months, several people suggested that I should start writing something more substantial. I was very reluctant to do so. The wounds were too raw.
Yet deep within me there was a need to find the words to express my faith and feelings, and a dogged unwillingness to surrender hope. I knew that the real enemy of faith is not doubt, but a faith unwilling to acknowledge doubt honestly. I had also learnt that hope is not wishful thinking or even optimism, but a question posed by faith in a world that gives us so much cause for despair and little for optimism. 5 As such, it requires people of faith to struggle with their doubts and give an account of the hope they affirm despite reasons to the contrary. What follows is my attempt to do that at this moment in my life that has become framed by tragedy, a time in which I am more than ever aware of the mystery of life and death.
Karl Rahner, one of the great Catholic theologians of the twentieth century once remarked that theo