Instead of being desperate, a sister started undressing

IT WAS a story I had heard many times before but would often ask Allan Goliath to repeat it.

And he would ever oblige retelling the story of how a woman misheard the words of a popular Christian song.

Goliath had first shared it with me in our weekly meetings during his three-year stint as a member of the St George’s Cathedral clergy staff. The occasion of his repeat performance was during our annual Clergy Conference in the Houw Hoek Inn.

This week about 40 clergies of the Anglican Diocese of Cape Town met in this scenic locale in the Overberg region just beyond Grabouw for a three-day respite from pastoral duties.

A few of us had gathered on the stoep of the hotel in the late Tuesday afternoon. We listened attentively as Goliath related an incident that had occurred in an unnamed congregation in Southern Cape Town.

A sister in the Lord had asked for an opportunity to share her testimony about how she had overcome a stumbling block in her faith journey. It concerned a song she had struggled to sing when she had first heard it. It had been sung by her fellow congregants at the weekly cottage bid-uur gatherings. But soon it numbered in the top-5 most sung choruses, outranking Vrou

van Samaria and Skud daai lyfie.

The pastor who related the story to Goliath said it could be that the koor

dans that evening might have released the sister from her reservations. For the reader unfamiliar with this regional liturgical practice, the koor dans, some explanation might be required.

The choreography of this dance is often confused with the quick-step, a feature of a parish langarm dance. Those dear ones who do a quick-step like koor dans might be saved, Beloved, that is when they give their heart to Jesus as in when they stop feasting on forbidden fruit, the desires of the flesh. But the commitment of their souls, that act of total surrender so longed for by their long-suffering guardian angels, is put on hold. As we say in our Cape ecclesial patois: Djy’s gered ma nie bekeer nie.

That night of our sister’s awakening the parishioners, seemingly filled with the spirit of their forebears, the region’s Chainouqua Khoi, stepped out of the hard, oakwood pews, slow-clapping their hands in a two-beat rhythm.

The men hummed and bent their bodies in the pose of the hunter stalking their prey through the hills of time in their quest to provide food for the empty pot on the cold stove of the homestead. The voices of the women were raised in a high-pitched, soaring descant. They danced, men, women and children in a counter-clockwise circle before the altar where the pastor stood, Bible held aloft.

“I need to testify, geliefdes,” said our sister at the centre of this story, “that up till today I have been too embarrassed to sing this song. But now I am free.”

Then, as she unbuttoned the top button of her cardigan, she sang, in a soft but melodious voice, “Lord, I undress before you…”.

The congregation froze in middance as the pastor shouted, “Hayibo, stop it right there. What do I always tell you, ‘don’t close your eyes when you sing!’”

The young man operating the sound-system was told to play the song our sister had sung.

He did so and the lyrics of the Michael W Smith classic, Breathe appeared on the overhead monitors and his voice filled the night air, “This is the air I breathe… And I, I’m desperate for you…”