Posted Thursday 18 September 2008
The Watson family are coming back to Scotland after more than four years in Sri Lanka. It’s been an interesting, multi-cultural experience for Paul, a CMS mission partner priest, his psychotherapist wife, Ina, and their children – as he explains...
It was a heart-stopping moment. Out of play, our boys’ club ball had fallen at the feet of one of the temple elephants that stand by our church railings. It seemed intent on eating the thing.
A newspaper headline flashed sickeningly into my head: Sacred Elephant Chokes on Anglican Volleyball.
You might wonder how we ended up with a church next to a parking bay for elephants. In fact, St Paul’s was built almost 160 years ago in the grounds of the Temple of the Tooth, one of Buddhism’s main pilgrimage sites – our colonial forefathers making a point we are still paying for today.
Beside the church are also four Hindu shrines and a sacred Bo tree.
On Sunday mornings there’s enough incense to make the Dean of Glasgow & Galloway more than happy. Not to mention chanting to various deities; bells and drums from the temple; and candles blowing in the wind while we sing from Ancient and Modern. A full sensory experience.
Mercifully, after chewing the ball, the elephant stepped on it in a rather distracted fashion, and then rubbed its back with the sorry lump that was left.
Our congregation is fully integrated into Sri Lankan society, and a full part of neighbourhoods and communities.
People attending weddings and funerals can be a full mix of faiths as families often are linked across religious divides.
The Buddhist and Hindu spouses of some of our church members will attend our Bible studies. One family organises a full-blown carol service with all the trappings and an all-Buddhist choir and audience.
We model national unity in that all ethnic groups are represented in our church. At a time when Sri Lanka’s traditional tolerance of minorities is under pressure from certain nationalistic elements, that’s important.
The community has even welcomed a Scottish family into its midst these last four-and-a-half years.
Our two girls, Abi (13) and Hannah (11), are immersed in a fully Sri Lankan context at school – though thankfully taught in English. They have been graced with some of the wonderful Asian values of what it means to be a woman.
Ina has grown a team of colleagues and collaborators from all communities as she has built a counselling and training service that has equipped counsellors throughout this beautiful but troubled island.
I have learned something of what it means to persevere in the faith by the many who humbly believe in the face of severe trial and unexpected calamity, or just keep going in the context of tsunami, civil war and annual inflation running at 30 per cent.
What we’ll take with us when we leave these shores is not just a kaleidoscope of memories but the ways we have changed: celebrating diversity, valuing simplicity, honouring graciousness of manner and bearing, humbly appreciating quiet resilience and being deeply thankful for small blessings.
Most of all is the experience that God indeed keeps his promises – even on the far side of the sea.
Meanwhile I need to go and buy a new volleyball.
• Since the Watson family went to Sri Lanka in April 2004, they have been supported by St Andrew’s Uddingston, St Cuthbert’s Cambuslang, St Margaret’s Newlands, St Ninian’s Pollokshields (where Paul served as curate), and his ‘home church’ of St Silas Glasgow. On their return in January, Paul will become rector of St Devenick’s Aberdeen.
Category: Overseas Action Network
