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Jane Haining

20/7/2021

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Canonisation in the Catholic Church is a lengthy process. Only after investigation into the heroic sanctity of an individual is that person declared a saint to be venerated by the universal Church. There are stages towards sainthood – the person is declared venerable, then blessed and then saint. It’s not so complicated in other Churches. Recently the Scottish Episcopal Church agreed at its General Synod that from next year a woman called Jane Haining will be remembered on 17th July, the anniversary of her death.  She will not be called a saint but will be recognised for her heroic courage and Christian commitment.

It's good that she’s being remembered. Jane Haining was a Scottish missionary who came from a rural part of Dumfriesshire and served as matron of the Girls’ Home at the Scottish Mission to the Jews in Budapest from where she was taken to Auschwitz with her Jewish charges to die at the age of 47.  I’m interested in her story because my branch of the Council of Christians and Jews was so taken by a talk on her life that we have set up a project, not just to promote her life but to use it as a reflection on racism, antisemitism and islamophobia in today’s society.  Last week four of our group travelled to Dunscore where Jane was born to meet with a group of parishioners from the parish church who have set up a visitors’ centre and developed a trail around the area to educate visitors about the only Scot to have died in Auschwitz and named Righteous Among the Nations at Yad Vashem in Jerusalem, Israel’s memorial to victims of the Holocaust. We were welcomed warmly and seeing the farm where Jane was born, the primary school she attended, the Church she walked to each Sunday, her name on the Dux table at Dumfries Secondary School where she boarded, brought her to life.

Jane is well known in the Church of Scotland and probably even better known in Budapest where she worked. Every year there is an essay competition on her life and work and the winners come to Scotland to visit the Central Offices of the Church, the village of Dunscore and Queens Park Church of Scotland in Glasgow where she worshipped before going to Hungary. There is a street next to the Danube in Budapest named after her, Jane Haining Rakpart, and just last year the village of Loanhead in Midlothian named a street ‘Haining Park’ in her memory.  Our project hopes to extend this essay competition or something akin to it to Scottish schools. We also have plans for a Jane Haining trail in and around Glasgow but one that will include the Jewish community and highlight some aspects of their history and how this relates to Jane’s life. It will also involve looking at challenging questions.  It was after all the Church of Scotland’s Mission to the Jews that ran the school in Budapest – what did that mean then, has the Christian understanding of mission and missionary changed, how is it now understood?  

Jane refused to abandon the Jewish girls in her care after the Nazi invasion of Hungary. She was on holiday at home when the Second World War broke out and returned to be with her charges. With the German invasion of Hungary, the political situation worsened, and she refused to heed requests by the Church of Scotland to return to the safety of Scotland, saying ‘If these children need me in days of sunshine, how much more do they need me in days of darkness?’.  She was in tears as she sowed the yellow star on to the clothes of the Jewish pupils. Dr Ninon Leader, a pupil at the school and Goddaughter of Jane, talking a few years ago at a Holocaust Memorial event in Glasgow, recalls the day when it was made compulsory for anyone Jewish to wear what was meant to be a badge of shame and how Jane “sobbed and walked with red eyes among us”.  She also told of how “acting in Miss Haining’s spirit and personality, irrespective of their religion, every single boarder in the Mission Home sewed a yellow star on their uniforms”.

We Scots can be proud of Jane Haining.  We can see in her life the tragic consequences of prejudice, discrimination, and hatred.  At a time when racism and antisemitism have not disappeared from our country hers is an example we want to emulate. As members of the Council of Christians and Jews we want to encourage understanding and respect, a recognition of our common humanity, our common citizenship not just of our country but of the world.  We have rooted our project in the value of loving kindness/chesed.  This for us is the foundation for our conviction that we belong to one human family; for our appreciation, reverence and respect for diversity and the uniqueness of each human being and our determination to work to overcome discrimination and to further understanding, acceptance, and kindness between cultures. This we believe is a step towards ensuring peaceful co-existence and stability in our world today. Surely there is no better legacy for Jane Haining than this.?


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The Melody of his Flute

6/7/2021

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It’s impossible, I think, to engage in interreligious dialogue and have your faith remain the same. It’s not that you don’t appreciate your own faith, far from it, or have a desire to abandon it and convert to another. What it does do is help widen our perspective and appreciate the religious longings at the heart of humankind – a longing and attraction that has given rise to the various religions of the world. Its this recognition that helps those involved in dialogue to feel at home in places of worship and at the services of other faiths.  At first it may seem strange. It may not be how we express our faith, but the recognition of the devotion and commitment of believers gives a sense of belonging to a wide community of believers. There can be a sense of sameness despite obvious differences.  To engage in dialogue is also to recognise the universal truth at the heart of the stories found in different scriptures. It is to find ourselves responding to them with devotion.

For me this is true of the stories of the Hindu Lord Krishna. According to the Hindu tradition Krishna is an incarnation of the Lord Vishnu and there are many stories of his exploits in Vrindaban where he grew up with foster parents. He is depicted as a flute player who entices the young women of the village with his music. Attracted by his flute, the story goes, they leave their homes, their families, their husbands to dance the night away with Krishna who multiplies himself so that each one feels herself totally loved.  Hearing his call, they have no option but to follow even if to do so is to break convention and tradition. For these women the love of God, manifest for them in the melody of Krishna’s flute, is the heart of their faith. It is a call to love and devotion which they cannot ignore. The poet Kabir expresses it beautifully,
              I hear the melody of his flute and I cannot contain myself;
              The flower blooms, though it is not spring; and already the bee has received its invitation.
               The sky roars and the lightening flashes, the waves arise in my heart,
                The rain falls and my heart longs for my Lord.
 
Many religious people have heard and felt this call and it’s at the heart of my own vocation.  Deep within religious faith there is an attraction to that which is transcendent, a desire to respond to what life offers, to grow in love and service, to become all that we are meant to be. I recognise this call when I hear the story of Krishna, I recognises similar attitudes in my own religion and in the poetry and prayers of the Christian mystics. But I also recognise it in some people who claim not to be religious. One such person is the scientist Professor Brian Cox who amazes many of us with his television programmes on the universe.  What comes across is his awe and wonder at the majesty and mystery of this universe of which we are a part. He delights in it all. At the end of a recent programme he commented that he expected to continue to be so amazed by the universe that the only adequate response would be silence. There are many mystics within all the religious traditions who have responded in a similar vein.
 
It would seem to me that this call, this attraction to the fullness of life could be a human and natural one as well as a religious one. Is this the essence of evolution as life has responded and adapted to new possibilities? It might be called gravity, a magnetic force by some, the call of a God who may be named as Allah or Krishna by others but is it not the same call, a call to a love and wonder that will express itself in compassion and care for others and the world we live in. Is this not the heart of religion, is this not what the earth is crying out for as we see and experience the effects of climate change and the need for healing and reconciliation among the nations? It would be good if religion could take us beyond externals to help us see and hear the possibilities that are open to us. It would be good if it could help us look beyond the pointing finger to see the moon itself and to respond accordingly. But so too for science. I can resonate with Brian Cox’s wonder and awe. I understand his rejection of a Creator outside of time. I have difficulties with it myself. But I do feel that we both hear a similar melody at the heart of life and in that have more in common than might be obvious at first sight.
 

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    I am  a Catholic nun, involved in interfaith relations for many decades.  For me this has been an exciting and sacred journey which I would like to share with others.

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