Amos comes and goes

I'm sitting on the porch of my little house and - believe it or not - the sun in shining! It's very warm, humid and calm. And the scene looks different from yesterday in other ways, too. last night we had a visitation - we were on the edge of cyclone Amos' path through the islands. The usually immaculate grounds of Piula look distinctly bedraggled: palm fronds all over the place, branches, a few trees. And most buildings have been partly boarded up. As the wind speed started to ratchet up last night, the principal (whose task I didn't't envy) directed a group of students to nail roofing iron or ply wood against the most vulnerable Windows. Mine were done between 11 and midnight as I lay in bed. I was anxious that the boys might be caught outside with debris blowing around, but they retired to safety. For a few hours the wind howled and screamed but when I woke at 4.00 all was calm again. The power's been off since 11 last night - which is to be expected.it would be good to have it restored soon - especially for the fridge. This post going live will be a signal that the power is back on. Everyone is astonished that we've had a cyclone so late in April. It brings home the fact that while climate change may hardly be noticeable in Belfast, here in the Pacific it's having all kinds of effects. 

I was preaching at the 8.00 am college service this morning and, yes, in spite of an interrupted and rather scary night, everyone was there in their best white  outfits. No power meant no keyboard, but the singing was full-on and very disciplined. The service  was followed by a very formal brunch with the staff - once again, more food than I can cope with. No repeat of yesterday's toasted sandwiches with tinned spaghetti and spam - for which I was grateful. 

Before the 3.00pm service (they just keep coming - rather like the meals here) I went down to the beautiful cave pool to cool off. You can s win about 20 metres into the cave, right underneath the chapel. The water is clear and deep with a shoal of fishes. You then reach a solid wall, but I'm told you can dive under it to come out at another pool a little further along. So far I've not felt a need to try that! 

I was due to give lectures tomorrow on the church in the Middle Ages (no, I'm not sure why, either) but the principal has declared Monday a clean up the college day, so no teaching till Tuesday. 

In other news, I am sharing my house with a number of fellow-creatures- it's inevitable in the tropics. The wooden parts of the house have little piles of sawdust, which indicate some unseen burrowing and chewing. Anything edible left out for more than a minute or two attracts thousands of tiny ants - something you have to get used to. Gecko lizards dart about the walls - welcome residents who help to keep the mosquitos down. However, I do draw the line at cohabiting with a bunch of marauding, 3 inch cockroaches, so when I was in town the other day I got hold of a pack of cockroach baits and scattered them about the house. They seem to be doing the business, which means that I now have to dispose of the corpses. 

Update: the power came on At 5.00 but not the college wifi, so I guess this post will have to wait till tomorrow morning when someone resets it. Worse news is that the college cattle farm, which is a little way in land, has been badly damaged by Amos, so most students will have to work there tomorrow. I'm being taken to a small island. - Samoa's answer to Viwa - where the early missionaries had their base. I'll hope to get this off before I go. 

O God, thou bottomless abyss!

Harsh critics of this blog might point out that, although it's called 'Theologian on the move', there's a lot more travelogue than theolog about it. Perhaps it's time to remedy that. 

It was 5.15 am in the coffee bar of Nausori airport. Winston Halapua suddenly asked my why I thought John Wesley had a written a hymn beginning with the line, 'O God, thou bottomless abyss'. It was a typical Winston question - four years ago he quizzed me about the Cappadocian Fathers during 

our early morning walK around Suva. Winston has written about moana - a Polynesian word for the ocean - as a way of understanding how God, the world and humanity are connected. He likes to point out that for islanders the ocean isn't so much the barrier that seperates us from one another as the thing that connects us to each other. Remember my blog about John Hunt on Viwa? He was there because he could get quickly out to sea to visit mission stations on other islands. 

Three days later I'm very conscious of the ocean; the muted roar of its waves have become a reassuring background to the day. The Pacific stretches beyond the horizon, and on for thousands of miles. And, of course, it's deep. Not quite bottomless, perhaps, but  with trenches that could swallow Everest without any bother. 

It turns out that Wesley's hymn was actually a translation from the German (the original is by Ernst Lange, a pietist) and first published in 1737 as part of a collection in Georgia during Wesley's unsuccessful missionary service in America. I  wonder if it was introduced to Wesley by the Moravians he encountered on his rough crossing of the Atlantic. Famously, these pietist Christians sang and prayed with confidence while the rest of the ship's company was in panic,  so Wesley may have been picking up a (for him) new way of understanding God through the experience of a safely-completed voyage. Here's how it begins:

O God, thou bottomless abyss,

Thee to perfection who can know?

O height immense, what words suffice

Thy countless attributes to show?

Unfathomable depths thou art

I plunge me in thy mercy's sea

Void of true wisdom is my heart

With love embrace and cover me

(Full text: http://www.traditionalmusic.co.uk/hymnlyrics2/pdf/o_god,_thou_bottomless_abyss-ernst_lange.pdf)

The hymn goes on to use the metaphor of the ocean to explore the immensity, power and unknowability of God, as well as God's benevolent provision and all-encompassing love. 

It's an interesting contrast to the way the sea is often depicted in the Bible. The people of Israel were landlubbers, and tended to see the sea as a threatening, chaotic force always in danger of overwhelming the order of creation. Noah's flood, Jonah in the fish's belly and so on. But in a context - like the Pacific islands - where the ocean is the ever-present reality and the source of so much provision - the sea can be seen in a more positive light. I'm reminded that sometimes we can only do justice to the' big picture' message of the Bible by using different language, or using language differently. It's what we call contextual hermeneutics in the trade.

So 'Oh God, thou bottomless abyss' is a thought that keeps coming  to mind in my temporary home by the shore. But today there's a reminder that the ocean can't be taken for granted. It has forces beyond our control. A new cyclone (Amos - the alphabet has started again after Zena) is bearing down on us. Already the intense rain is pouring down (forcing the cancellation of the Women's fellowship BBQ) and there's a warning of strong winds and tidal surges to come. And that, too, gives theologians pause for thought.

So this is Samoa!

2 1/2 hours after leaving cloudy and soggy Fiji I arrive in - cloudy and soggy - Samoa. The runway is right by the sea and you pass over the reef and shallow waters before touching down. Walking into the terminal building, surrounded by colourful plants, you immediately notice something different. Samoa looks as if it has won the 'best kept Pacific island' title for years on end, and has no intention of giving up the title in a hurry. If Fiji can err on the side of messy, Samoa has a touch of the obsessively tidy about it. Anything to do with the fact that it was once a German colony, I wonder? Villages, with their mixture of open sided traditional fales and more modern houses, are beautifully neat, with flowering shrubs and short grass around them. Piula Theological College, where I am staying, exemplifies this. You could hardly imagine a more idyllic setting, right by the seashore, with the backdrop of green mountains. A cave under the White-painted church opens into a deep, crystal-clear fresh-water pool, only a few feet from the sea. It's beautiful, but the students and their wives (only married men can be Methodist ministers in Samoa) pay a high price to keep it that way. Their day begins with prayers at 5.30 am followed by work on the college grounds until classes begin at 8. On Friday afternoons and Saturdays they are expected to work on the college plantation, where their food is grown. and on Sunday's, of course, they spend most of the day in church. 

There was a service soon after I arrived. Iwas astonished to see everyone - men, women and children, attending in white outfits, with the women wearing long white dresses and matching hats. This is the way they've done things for generations, and Samoa is an intensely traditional place. It makes Tonga look decidedly sloppy - and Edgehill, I'm afraid, pretty casual. Students can only leave the campus with permission of the staff. Those who are still single (and therefore have pressure building on them) live in one open-plan dormitory. 

I don't want to give the impression that this is a backwater of theological education. Mosese, the principal, is young, highly qualified (well, he and I both have PhDs from Birmingham) and a very sharp thinker. He's well aware of the issues that connect Piula with the wider educational world and of the need to balance tradition with change. There are impressive buildings and good facilities. An interesting aspect of the community is that many of them come from the Samoan diaspora in New Zealand, Australia and the US, so they've known a very different lifestyle and tend to speak excellent English. They also bring a host of skills. Yesterday, at 6.05 am a student who.'d been an electrician in Auckland arrived to fix the light in my bedroom.

I'm staying in a roomy, if somewhat delapitated, guest bungalow. I can see - and hear - the ocean from my bedroom. waking up my first thought is 'there goes a train'; then I remember where I am and realise that it's the sound of surf breaking on the reef. 

I was taken to Apia yesterday, to do some shopping. It's about 40 minutes along bumpy roads. The famous Aggie Grey's hotel is now refurbished as a Sheraton Inn and there are many new buildings - commercial and government, it seems a much more prosperous place than Tonga. I've been assigned to one of the tutorial families in the college. This means that at .7 each morning one of the students brings me a tray of breakfast and that each evening I am to be hosted by one of the couples. It feels slightly embarrassing but hospitality is taken very seriously here. 

And still the rain goes on! I've never known such an intense rainy season in the Pacific - something to do with El Niño, apparently.   

So that was Fiji

I have a soft spot for Fiji. It's not a tropical paradise: prone to natural disasters, struggling to develop a stable democratic government, often seemingly chaotic and messy. But somehow it works - a melange of cultures, languages and religions combining to create a sense of energy and hope. I wonder if I'll ever visit it again - I hope so. 

Some highlights from my final days there:

A week spent mostly at the Pacific Theological College, an ecumenical, regional institute sitting by the seashore at the tip of the Suva peninsula. It's  no longer in its heyday - national and denominational colleges have been catching up with it, but it does bring students together from around the Pacific and staff from all over the world. Two days of a Methodist theological forum followed by teaching and conversation. My thanks to Val Ogden for facilitating much of this. Worship on Friday morning was especially enjoyable: a communion service in English led by a German Lutheran and with a formal, Samoan approach to receiving communion. 

Butt Street Wesley Mission. I attended services there on both Sunday's - they use English. The first service was led by a Local preacher - one Sitiveni Rabuka who, as Brigadier Rabuka, led the 1987 coup that sent Fiji into years of constitutional limbo. He's rather chastened now. The following Sunday there was a baptism conducted by our old friend Aquila Yabaki - one of Diane's former colleagues and since his return to Fiji a hero of the movement for constitutional change. There's something constructive about these former enemies being part of the same church. I had coffee with Aquila after the service, caching up on each other's families and friends. The Methodist Church does have some excellent young leadership and you hope they have the opportunity to move things along. 

Coffee and meals out with Winston and Sue. Coffee by the pool of the Grand Pacific Hotel, now restored to its former glory by a business consortium from Papua New Guinea. Two very good meals out. one at an Indian restaurant in downtown Suva, the other in the shabby chic surroundings of the Royal Suva Yacht Club. This could be the setting for a Somerset Maughan short story. Part of the rambling and ramshackle seafront building has been turned into a restaurant ( please mention us on Trip Advisor said the waitress when I praised the chargrilled tuna with spicy rice) while the rest is a reminder of a different age. A glass cabinet is stuffed with silver trophies for yacht races (I wonder: do they still race for them?). A notice board gives the names of the commodore, rear commodore and committee alongside tattered adverts for boats of various sizes. A battered pool table sits in the middle of the floor. As we ate a bright orange lifeboat came alongside and unloaded sackful so of fish. I loved it! 

Winston and Sue kindly drove me to the tiny Nausori airport early on Monday morning. We said our farewells in coffee bar - more fun than Heathrow. 

Pilgrimage to Viwa

TS Eliot has a line in his poem, Little Gidding: 'You are here to kneel where prayer has been valid'. That could sum up a visit to the  tiny island of Viwa, just off the coast of Viti Levu and close to the chiefly island of Bau. It's where two of the great missionaries to Fiji are buried. Joeli Bulu was a Tongan who, in the 1830s, became a missionary to the people who had been his people's traditional enemy. He once answered the question 'why do you pray to the Christian God' with 'so that I may live among the stars'. John Hunt was an English farm labourer (from the village next to the one where I grew up) who trained as a Methodist minister and was one of the first students in a Methodist theological college. He died on Viwa in 1848, aged 36, having translated the New Testament, begun a training centre for indigenous missionaries and written a book on sanctification.

My visit began at Davuilevu, the Methodist theological college, where a student, Pa'u, joined me as guide. Pa'u is from Bau and the chiefly family, so he knows the protocol. Our taxi took us to Nausori market where we bought a bundle of kava root to present as a ceremonial gift, then on to the Bau landing stage. Our boat was about 18-20ft, made of battered fibreglass and powered by a 40hp outboard. The forecast had been for strong winds and the open sea was pretty rough, with choppy waves and some white water. Spray came over us and I was was lent a tarpaulin for protection. Under skilled hands, the boat slid around the waves and slowly moved across the gap between the islands. I kept telling myself that the boatman knew his business and wouldn't be risking his life for just a few dollars! We landed in calmer waters on the leeward side of Viwa, a mere speck in the ocean, mostly bounded by mangrove swamp and with just one tiny settlement. Electricity has arrived in the last year. Here, the missionaries set up their printing press and Hunt had his headquarters, within sight of the (then) pagan chief Cacobau. We walked up the path  between the houses, with their neat gardens and blue corrugated roofs. At the top of the small hill stands the church, a simple A-frame. Behind it are the graves, some with iron railings sent over from England in the Victorian era. It was a peaceful and prayerful place, apart from the noisy bustle of modern Fiji, but with a sense of holy concern. Here, Hunt had turned to Bau, praying for its chief, for an end to the cannibal wars and for the conversion of Fiji.


We moved on to the minister's house, on the same site as Hunt's, and had 'morning tea' after Pa'u presented the kava to a representative of the chief. No kava drinking (for which I was thankful) as the island has a 'tapu' for a period and kava is replaced with prayer and fasting. That might well have been the end of the visit, but a mobile call to Pa'u (yes, even here, everyone has a mobile!) told us to stay put and wait for another boat load of visitors They (visitors from the Uniting church, Australia) arrived 2 1/2 hours later and we did the tour again before heading home in the same boat. We called on the prayer house the other side of the island - the spot where Hunt prayed for his enemies and admired the chapel that is meant to be the focus of a projected retreat centre. I had declined the suggestion that I spend the night in the chapel so that my prayer might lead to an encounter with Hunt!

The outing ended back at Davuilevu with a faikava and talanoa (conversation).

Colleges, Colonialism and Shopping

http://www.governorsfiji.com/about.html

I took Sue, my hostess, out to lunch. 

Governors - use the link above for its website - embodies the contradictions and  charm of Fiji today. It describes itself as a museum-themed restaurant. Housed in an old colonial building, its walls are covered in memorabilia from the days when Fiji was an outpost of empire. A photo of the first plane to land in Suva (1928), the cover of volume 1 (1930) of Pacific Islands Monthly (announcing that wireless communication was going to transform life), posters of films with a Pacific theme, and so on. The service is immaculate, the menu eclectic and (for here) expensive. Sue and I were led to a table next to the one occupied by the deputy prime-minister and his entourage - almost as if the present rulers of Fiji were having the last laugh. Outside the rain poured down on the lush gardens. 

I've also had a series of rather different encounters. 

Coffee with Val Ogden at the Holiday Inn ( a bit ordinary compared with Governors!). Val's a mission partner and British minister, leading the theological education by extension unit at the Pacific Theological College. I've known Val on and off for years - she used to do sessions for my WEMTC students when she taught at Selly Oak, Birmingham. She's very outgoing (which makes an introvert like me jealous) and has been really helpful in setting up some contacts for my visit here. Val also hosted a meal Friday evening at her home at PTC, giving me the chance to meet some of the staff - very much an international crowd and a stimulating conversation. Challenges in theological education have similar themes right across the globe. Late in the evening the rain stopped and one of the lecturers helped me get a taxi - walking is fine during the day but not advisable late at night. 

Coffee (I'm re-developing my taste for iced coffee) with Julia Edwards. another mission partner from Britain, Julia works for the Pacific Conference of Churches and is an expert on climate change. Her partiuclar concern at the moment is the need to relocate people from the most vulnerable situations in Pacific island countries. For many people it's already too late to reverse global warming and the rise in sea levels. They will have to be found new homes - with all the issues around social dislocation that goes along with that. 

A visit to ECREA - the ecumenical research and social action institution for Fiji. It's director, Sirino Rikabi, took me through their programmes. What's impressive is that it puts into practice so much of what we talk about as theological reflection. Working with local communities - through the churches coming together - they help people analyse the issues they face and provide biblical and theological input to help them work on appropriate action. It's in its early days, but I felt it was being promoted with a combination of expertise, humility and realism. 

A visit to Davuilevu. The Methodist theological college is out of town, not far from the domestic airport. A large hilly estate, it has space for students to grow their own food. I was to have given a talk to the students, but the flood situation stopped that and I went later in the day for tea with some of the faculty - as shown in the photo in my last post. As well as the Principal, Anil, and the Church History lecturer, Susu, There was an American couple, Wesley and Jerusha Neal, who helped us share some of our mutual concerns about church, ministry and theological education. When I mentioned my interest in Joh Hunt, the pioneer missionary to Fiji, the conversation got even more animated. The local staff promised to help me visit Viwa island, where Hunt is buried, 

Which brought me to Saturday. Some preparation (I have a number of presentations to make next week) and then a wander round the Suva shops, mingling with the good-natured, multi-cultural crowd. Even here, though, recent problems aren't far away. The fruit and veg in the market is hugely expensive at the moment because of all the damage the cyclone has done to the crops. I couldn't resist buying a bula shirt - though not the most garish in the shop - and at the Methodist Church Bookstore discovered that they were still selling the 1933 Book of Offices of the British Methodist Church. 

A pack of live crabs. 

A well-stocked stall at the market.

Crowded street

Dodging a bullet

It's difficult to believe that I've been in Suva nearly four days - eventful days, but not in the way I expected. The good news is that cyclone Zena, which suddenly developed as a category 3 storm on Wednesday, went slightly to the south of its predicted course and so we were spared its damaging winds. People were sent home from work Wednesday afternoon and a curfew was imposed from 6pm. Waking up during the night (a combination of jet lag, anxiety and the sound of rain on an iron roof) I kept checking the bulletins from the met office. By 3.00 am I knew we were safe. Around 8.00 the curfew was lifted, but schools and colleges remained closed because there was so much flooding around the country. Fiji is still in a state of emergency following cyclone Winston 6 weeks ago and this only makes the task of recovery more difficult. You can only marvel at the resilience of people. Intense rain showers are still with us, but the flood levels On major rivers are going down. 

Suva itself is a sprawling city, occupying a peninsular that sits between Suva harbour and Laucala Bay. Capital city and regional centre, you can find relics of the colonial past (from the splendour of the Grand Pacific Hotel to crumbling timber-framed houses) alongside new hotels and shopping centres, apartment blocks, bungalows, squatters' shacks. Nearly 40 years ago, in January 1979, I arrived here for the first time, en route to spending three yeaars teaching in Tonga. I didn't know what had hit me! I was overwhelmed by the heat and sights and sounds and smells, especially when Sue Halapua took me to the indoor market By the wharf. I couldn't imagine getting used to living in an environment like this. It feels very different now. This morning I had my early walk along the sea front, the harbour full of large foreign fishing boats and cargo ships. It feels genuinely good to be back, though. I hugely admire those who deal with the challenges of life here year on Year.  I saw flying foxes heading for their roostS and Falcons carving up the air. In the market I bought pawpaw for breakfast. 

The extreme weather has meant changes to my programme. Tuesday I was able to meet James Bhagwan, communications officer for the Methodist Church. With a background in broadcasting, James uses his many talents in the service of the Church. He's been coordinating the response to the recent cyclone and it's clear that this is going to take the energy and resources of the church for some time to come. Homes, businesses, churches and schools all need rebuilding. James is also involved in the ambitious development programme for the church - a 'new Exodus' as they are calling it. The church has gone through difficult times here since the first coup in the 80s but its present leadership has a very positive outlook. James arranged for me to have lunch with the president of the church, Tevita Banivanua, who I'd last met in London, and he shared his vision for a church that is trying to move forward. 

The photo below is from my visit to the Methodist Theological College of Davuilevu. More of that in my next post. 

With some of the faculty of Davuilevu Theological College (Dr Jerusha Neal, Principal Anil Reuben and Rev Ilimeleki Susu) with portraits of paramount chief Cacobau and missionary John Hunt.