Another great blog!
First i have say that its good to know that Africa is still messing with your mind! She has done well!
i was wondering why you are so worried about injustice when you are still no. 1 supporter of you know who - that one’s just to press your buttons a wee bit. i think that you have hit the nail on the head here. it is too painful for us - so we run from it and live in our anesthetic worlds. often this is the problem from the west - alot of support comes from guilt offerings and not love offerings. do you remember our MC mission thing - one of the songs we used was Louis Armstrong “listen to pops and love baby love “. thats it.

the other side of it is that often we feel more bad than the people we are feeling bad for a feeling.

you touch on some issues i have also been pondering these days - so i thought i would share what i have written on it - hope its not too long for your comments sight.

here it is…..

Two weeks ago I read this book called “I heard the owl call my name”. In brief, the book is about this Priest’s life in a remote Indian village. Knowing that he is terminally ill, his Bishop sends him there to experience the real meaning and depth of life. The story continues with the life lessons the Priest learns from his interaction with this foreign people and their interaction with him. With westernisation and globalisation continually encroaching and claiming more territory, the community has to grapple with the prospect of its extinction. In contrast to a western teacher that has come to teach the children but keeps the community at arms length, the Priest completely engages with the people, pouring his life and love out to them, in their celebrations and through their suffering. In turn, the community pour their love back into him. We learn of the beauties and richness of life he receives through what we may perceive as a hard, meagre and inferior society. Because of this, when faced with his own death, it is almost as though he is ready and prepared for it in a way that he may not have been should he have remained with his own people.

The story is deeply moving and touches on profoundly real issues of life and death. I had the option of being able to read the book for a second time, but I found myself avoiding doing so. Faced with the question of “Why,” I realised that in fully entering into the narrative it brought memories of Tsunami and living in the wee village flooding back. More specifically, like the village and the Priest who had to face their deaths, it meant having to face my own death.

Tsunami brought this reality so close that I could almost feel its breathlessness on my face…

…The second memory ‘photo’ was about six weeks after Tsunami when there was another earthquake near Sumatra. A Tsunami warning was sounded and people fled their homes waiting for the wave to come and destroy once again. Although it never came, the emotional impact on the village, including myself, said it had. The lanes that had been filled with community life and children laughing were silenced. I was silenced as fear of death gripped my throat and mind. I was left in awe of the people who continued to live in the Tsunami zone. As I continued to interact with them and watched how they overcame the suffering this had brought into their lives, I learnt, especially through the women. They seemed to be comfortable with the presence of suffering and did not try to run from it, chasing dreams of western comfort. Rather it was accepted as a part of normal life. I realised that in my Christianity I am living out a form of prosperity gospel which has no place for pain, death and suffering.

Since coming back home, I heard death knocking on my door, wanting to enter. There have been times where I have been tempted to open it, letting death in. There have been other times where the knock has been so strong that I feared the lock would not hold. And there have been those moments that my imagination has played tricks on me, thinking that I was hearing death trying to break in. I wonder to what extent I have built a wall, gearing my life towards not having to hear or see death knocking on my door again?

I wonder to what extent I am also avoiding truly living and engaging in life here in South Africa. All day, everyday, we are bombarded with death and suffering. Like in a nightmare where you have faces perpetually screaming at you so is the prospect of HIV, rape, violent crime and the pain of Apartheid screaming at me. I want to run from it so I can ‘enjoy’ life and be free. Yet, by doing so the Priest and my little village call out to me, reminding me that by doing so I am in fact running from where the source of life is hidden – in the heart of suffering.

When the Priest heard the owl call his name, he knew that death was awaiting him. Reflecting on the last years of his life, it is almost like he had been prepared for this. I wonder if, maybe, the owl is calling my name. Not to die my physical death, but to where death is roaming, here in South Africa. Is this not the antithesis that every molecule and fibre demands and seeks after? ….

so thats it.

Cathy