Category: Sunday Letter

Grace to you

In recent weeks the fining of homeless people in Cape Town made headlines. It resulted in an uproar of civil society organisations and many others. Even the SA Human Rights Commission took immediate action listening to the plight of the homeless. The debate was polarised and emotive. I thought it was great that the discussion shed some light on the complexity of homelessness. Homeless people are not a homogenous group whose challenges can be fixed with simple solutions. They might have primarily in common that they live on the streets, but that is almost where it stops. There are many different reasons why people end up living on the street, how long they are in this position, and how desperate they are to move out of this situation. The experience of different genders living in these unsafe conditions varies completely. The abuse of substances is often a big part of the problem, but even that aspect is complicated. We might have a picture of loud and aggressive behaviour in mind when we think of homelessness. We forget that homelessness also has the face of silence, withdrawal, apathy and joy. Homelessness is ingrained in our systems and history. Even though homelessness is a global phenomenon, there is a particular historical context of spatial segregation and forced removals that contributes to this problem in South Africa.

The issue of homelessness is complicated, messy and challenging. And this holds for most of the problems we are facing as a society. Sending the army into the Cape Flats to fight gangs is another very recent example when debates got lost in polarised opinions. It is easy to condemn outright the use of force as a mechanism to combat gangs. If a stray bullet would have killed my child while sitting at the dinner table or I had to sleep on the floor every night to not be killed in my sleep, I am sure I would have been among the cheering people lining the streets when the army arrived. Global syndicates control gang activity in South Africa, worsened by large-scale corruption and global drug trade. Again, the issue of gangs is complex. Complexity is not unique to our times. Social justice issues have always been complex within their context. Jesus challenged the people of his time to think and not blindly follow the rules and laws. He often did that through story-telling or unexpected actions or miracles. Complexity never deterred Jesus from acting. Complexity was not an excuse for apathy, but urgency. He understood that addressing a problem meant tackling it from different angles and with different tactics.

I am quoting M. Scott Peck:

Abandon the urge to simplify everything, to look for formulas and easy answers, and to begin to think multi-dimensionally, to glory in the mystery and paradoxes of life, not to be dismayed by the multitude of causes and consequences that are inherent in each experience — to appreciate the fact that life is complex.

I believe the world of today with its massive challenges, locally and globally, invites us to think deeply, to think inside out and upside down. It challenges us to reject lazy thinking and allow for creativity, ideas and wonder to emerge to bring justice and love into the world and to the people who need it most.

Carolin

Grace to you

The picture above was the cover picture for the Optimists Edition of Time Magazine earlier this year. The Artist is our own Nelson Makano from Limpopo Province. His particular style, often using a young cousin as his model, is to draw and paint South African children with a new sense of brightness and depth.

The editor of the Optimist Edition, Ava Du Vermay, explained that art can be used for optimism and hope. “Prioritizing hope, whenever possible, is a brave and bold thing to do.” She believes that art embraces all our feelings and imaginings and that despite our socio-political disjuncture, we need each other, and to engage in a shared, fearless way. She believes Art can do this in all its manifestations. Makano’s cover portrait was the fitting representation. He has drawn international recognition. He commented on his passion, saying, “Later in life we sometimes forget there is beauty in being human, but children are just discovering that. I look at someone, and the moment I’ve seen them can feel so beautiful. I want to capture that moment on canvas.”

Yes we do forget that there is so much beauty in being human. A child’s eyes and ears, absorbing everything sponge-like, seeks to process information with a liberating innocence. The artist is depicting the hope in a young child’s eyes, and reminding us of the joy that we should all feel for children, these gifted promises of God. Makano titled the picture, “Visions of a limitless future.”

The plight of vulnerable children is a barometer for society highlighting the failures of institutional and other responses to make a real difference for upholding the personhood and humanity of children. As people journeying in faith, do we have a message of hope for our children, for other vulnerable daughters and sons of God? Can we be bold in hope? Not just sharing the bright side, but more. Much more. Deeper. Can we dare to try to comprehend the grace of God in Jesus, bringing Hope to a broken world?

Jesus, (Luke 18:15ff), reprimands the disciples when they shoo the children away. Children brought by their parents for a blessing! The disciples saw the children as a nuisance. Eugene Peterson’s, The Message uses these words for the reprimand “let these children alone. Don’t get between them and me. These children are at the very centre of life in the kingdom.”  The children, the poor, the sick, the foreigner, the other. All these vulnerable humans are often shooed away figuratively and literally. Life, however, in all its daily complexity, confronts us also with loved ones who may be vulnerable in time and place. And we may actually engage in a disengaging way. We disengage with good intentions, with well-meaning platitudes, with impatience and disdain, with fear and anxiety with anger and rejection, with paternalism and self-righteousness, with pain and suffering. In those moments, pregnant with hope, do we come between Christ and the other?

And what of us when we are vulnerable?

Du Vermay also quotes Howard Thurman “Whatever may be the tensions and the stresses of a particular day, there is always lurking close at hand the trailing beauty of forgotten joy or unremembered peace.” Do we have a faith message of hope? A message, a presence, lived moments that are boldly professing hope in Christ. A way to engage, and a way to be engaged, to release the beauty in being human.

I share this contemplative insight from Nan Merrill’s book: Lumen Christi … Holy Wisdom:

Arise! Become a rebel for the Spirit!
Let not worldly wars and woes
paralyze your aspiration
to unite in the birth of a new dawn.

Discouragement and despair burden
the heart:
dark thoughts often lead to
deadly deeds.

Dive deeply into the Cosmic Ocean of Love!
Here harmony, beauty, peace, truth,
and inspiration reign:
needed for the healing and repair
of this wondrous world.

Become a beneficial rebel in the service
of Love and Light!
Look within the Silence:

Divine Hints will set you on the pathway
to new Life offering guidance,
comfort, and strength
for the journey.

Gilbert

Grace and peace to you

Being present to and engaging with the cyclical nature of Life can be an incredibly grounding rhythm, connecting us with our true nature. We live in a culture obsessed with fast pace, constant productivity at any cost, and a denial of diminishment, loss, weakness, vulnerability, mortality and even death. 

 The cycle of life, death and rebirth is the only way all things flourish. It is in resistance to this that we truly suffer. 

 To those open to learn, we are taught these ways – from the dawn and dusk of every day, to the monthly cycle of the moon. From the seasons, graphically displayed in a grand forest, with its dramatic change of colours in the autumn, the surrendering of its leaves and its bold stance of naked branches against the grey sky, to the menstrual cycle in a female body, with the preparation for new life, new ventures, new opportunities, both physically and psychologically, and then slowing down to a death and grief of what could have been and a gentle turning inward, or, the self-sacrifice initiated to birth a new human being. 

As we have just passed the winter solstice, perhaps we could heed the invitation to be present to a latent time, a time after death and letting go, a time of rest and hibernation, hiding and germinating, with the promise of Spring and Summer gently held in the silence and the stillness. May we exercise the courage and appropriate the grace to be with the potential discomfort this season may bring up, as we face what is, in and around us. Letting go the illusion of control in doing, in order to witness and experience the emerging mystery in Being. 

 Towards abundant life. 
Catherine

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The Winter of Listening

No one but me by the fire,
my hands burning
red in the palms while
the night wind carries
everything away outside.

All this petty worry
while the great cloak
of the sky grows dark
and intense
round every living thing.

What is precious
inside us does not
care to be known
by the mind
in ways that diminish
its presence.

What we strive for
in perfection
is not what turns us
into the lit angel
we desire,

what disturbs
and then nourishes
has everything
we need.

What we hate
in ourselves
is what we cannot know
in ourselves but
what is true to the pattern
does not need
to be explained.

Inside everyone
is a great shout of joy
waiting to be born.

Even with the summer
so far off
I feel it grown in me
now and ready
to arrive in the world.

All those years
listening to those
who had
nothing to say.

All those years
forgetting
how everything
has its own voice
to make
itself heard.

All those years
forgetting
how easily
you can belong
to everything
simply by listening.

And the slow
difficulty
of remembering
how everything
is born from
an opposite
and miraculous
otherness.
Silence and winter
has led me to that
otherness.

So let this winter
of listening
be enough
for the new life
I must call my own. 

David Whyte (The House of Belonging)

 

 

 

 

What gardening has taught me…

A gardener’s job is never done. Although the winter months are seen as the dormant time of the gardening year, there is always something that needs attending to, and for me these cold winter months are when I get next season’s compost heap going.

The process starts in the autumn when the deciduous trees start to shed their leaves. Then the Cape storms that wash over the Peninsula deliver all sorts of debris in the form of branches, sticks and evergreen leaves. Winter is also a time to prune and so all that material ends up in the compost heap, along with any weeds that may have to be removed from the garden beds. Finally there may be some grass clippings that will also end up in the mix.

So the compost heap starts out as a chaotic mix of different and unrelated materials.

The wetness of our winter months helps settle the compost heap and then as the weather starts to warm during Spring and the early Summer months, the pile will start to steam as the materials within the heap decompose. It really gets going during the second half of summer and after Christmas I often need to turn over the heap. Then all going well, come autumn, you end up with a beautiful homogenous pile of dark brown compost that you can spread as a blanket over your garden beds.

The making of compost is a journey between chaos and order. You take a whole mix of mess and then with work, time and a bit of magic, that chaotic mess turns into a usable and nutritious product that will define the next season’s abundance of food and flowers.

I find that my own life follows that same routine. My journey through life is a constant swing between chaos and order and if you are anything like me, more chaos than order.

I am always planning to have an ordered life and hope that it could be like that end pile of neat compost rather than feeling it is mostly like the chaotic mess of leaves, branches and lawn clippings that is the starting point of the compost heap.

I am slowly learning to embrace the idea of chaos, to rather accept it and learn how to ride the swing between chaos and order. Just as I could never produce a beautiful load of compost without the chaotic and messy pile in the beginning, so it is unrealistic of me to expect my own dreams and plans to materialise without a messy and chaotic journey along the way.

Jesus loved stirring the pot and creating chaos wherever he went. Chaos is always needed to challenge the status quo and so if you embrace the Jesus way, the one guarantee is that chaos and mess are going to come your way. But out of that chaos a new sense of order always develops and just when you are getting comfortable and think you have all the answers, you will be challenged to make a new compost heap.

In my own little garden my compost heap is visible from the cottage that I live in. In fact, at the moment it is as big as my cottage and is the focal point of the outdoor space that surrounds me. Not a water feature, not a rose garden, but rather the compost heap. The compost heap should be the visual focal point of every garden and not hidden away in the backyard. Seeing it each morning as I drink my first cup of tea, reminds me that chaos and order are intricately linked and a very necessary part of my life. My challenge is to face the constant swing between chaos and order with love, grace, humility and most importantly, gratitude.

Sincerely, Athol

In praise of doubt

Praised be doubt! I advise you to greet
Cheerfully and with respect the man
Who tests your word like a bad penny.
I’d like you to be wise and not to give
Your word with too much assurance

Read history and see
The headlong flight of invincible armies.
Wherever you look
Impregnable strongholds collapse and
Even if the Armada was innumerable as it
Left port
The returning ships
Could be numbered.

Thus, one day a man stood on the
Unattainable summit
And a ship reached the end of
The endless sea.

O Beautiful the shaking of heads
Over the indisputable truth!
O brave the doctor’s cure
Of the incurable patient!

But the most beautiful of all doubts
Is when the downtrodden and despondent
Raise their heads and
Stop believing in the strength of their oppressors.

 (excerpt by Bertolt Brecht, 1932)

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I’ve been thinking about Doubt a lot lately. Everything seems to scream and mock from every corner that there is nothing good about doubt. The remedies are many, none more so than having faith it seems which seems to plunge me into the darkest of abyss or on a blind path, like anything can be contained so neatly. As if God could only find me pleasing if I have faith.

And then this poem, it was like every nerve ending stood to attention. At last something I could relate to. It seems to me that Doubt can be BOTH a ‘gift’ and a ‘curse’. Its curse is the continuation or other half of this poem, if you choose to read it to its end. Its curse seems to be a universal human condition of always being certain of one’s own treasured beliefs, holding tightly onto a faith that will not be shaken, even in oneself.

Perhaps it’s not as I have always believed an either… or… but rather a Faith that walks hand in hand with Doubt, both necessary to each other.

Perhaps doubt is rather a Divine gift urging us on to seek and search our inner most beliefs, shaking something deep within ourselves, challenging us to doubt what we have always believed, our certainties, actions, the status quos in this world, enlarging and forcing us at last, to recognise the light within the darkness of ourselves.

Bertolt Brecht was a German playwriter and poet who made popular Epic theatre. The purpose of which was to force the audience to see their world as it is, by using historical contexts and connecting them with current social or political issues. He wanted his audiences to think. He seemed to think we could change the world because to quote him he said (another excerpt) “General, man is very useful. He can fly and he can kill. But he has one defect: He can think.”

Trusting in Doubt
Pam