Anene: let's look up to God

I have no idea how quickly graphic, gruesome news stories spread from Africa to North America. I imagine the story of the young Indian woman assaulted to death in a bus created quite a sensation. 

Just about 200 kilometers from where we live, another young girl was attacked earlier this month. She was only 17. Her name was Anene Booysen. Anene means "let's look up to God."

I sincerely hope she did look to Him in her final hours. Better not to dwell on the sordid details in this blog. Sensationalizing things does not bring resolution or make a difference. In fact, I wonder what the media does accomplish most of the time--besides selling more newspapers or getting more clicks on the internet.

Anene was a young, coloured teen. She lived with a foster mom. She was out late at night, but she did not "have it coming." Her death has been politicized. At her funeral so many governmental organizations "spoke" that her family didn't have an opportunity. 

There are many problems in this world and in this lovely land. But the deepest one is the problem of the heart. And so far, it has not been addressed. Anene was violated and killed by young men who knew her. Such "friends" should have been her protectors against strangers, but they vented their own brokenness upon her weakness. Their choices started long before they went for her.

Dag Hammarskjöld wrote:

You cannot play with the animal in you without becoming wholly animal, play with falsehood without forfeiting your right to truth, play with cruelty without losing your sensitivity of mind. He who wants to keep his garden tidy, doesn't reserve a plot for weeds.

Those young men didn't suddenly become vicious and pathological. They were not born that way. Something in them and in their environment brought the poison out into the light of day. South Africa mourns. South Africans carry placards against hate crimes against women and children. South Africa watches helplessly.

Protesting the results of playing with cruelty and falsehood while not addressing the root is a futile activity. We need to start weeding the gardens of the heart now.

That is why I am so glad to be here and working to get to the heart of the matter.

a peek into Afrikanerdom: candle snuffers

This is the Huguenot Memorial in Franschhoek, surrounded by western Cape mountains and open sky. It is a testament to the spirit of those escaping oppression in France, determined to worship freely. The woman (liberty) of the statue holds a book (truth) in her right hand and a broken chain in her left.

On the underside of the globe, earth, on which she stands is the southern tip of Africa. Engraved are symbols of Huguenot cultural values: the harp signifies music and culture, the wheat and grapes, agriculture, the spinning wheel, their industry, the book, their faith and dedication to Truth.

We visited Franschhoek last week, it was a moving experience. This week I began a book by one of the descendants of those Huguenots, a Malan, who comes from a long line of true Afrikaners. His commentary is disquieting. He tells of people who fled persecution to become persecutors; those who demanded liberty for themselves and deprived others.

Here he describes the mindset towards the European Enlightenment which brought into question the traditional mores and which led to humanitarian reform. (This is not a defense of the Enlightenment, it is a reminder of the danger of a closed mind.)

...when rumors of the Enlightenment penetrated their wilderness, the Afrikaners considered them, consulted their Bibles and preachers, and finally reached a consensus: These new ideas presented a threat to their survival, and should be suppressed--not only in the world at large, but in their own hearts. Soon many Afrikaners were calling themselves Doppers, after the little metal caps with which they snuffed out candles. They called themselves Doppers because they were deliberately and consciously extinguishing the light of the Enlightenment, so that they could do what they had to do in darkness.

Where does this leave us? It is easy to look back and see what a dangerous path they chose. We all know the power of Truth: it sets us free. But sometimes the process can be uncomfortable or threatening. So we tell ourselves half-truths, or rationalize, and that way goes the game.

Phil and I work in the aftermath of this Giant Cover-up being blown. There are ramifications in every community and every family. It is an on-going process and the more I see how it has ravaged those at the edges of society, the more convinced I am that only the Spirit of God can make a change. Oh, I knew that, intellectually, but then a part of me set to work to try and solve the "problems." Alas. 

To come to the knot at the end of the rope and know that in me there is no solution: that is terrifying or freeing. I'm in that process now and will share as I catch glimpses. I pray that I will not choose the safety of ignoring uncomfortable Truth.

There are many truths about Afrikaners, but none so powerful and reverberant as this willful self-blinding.

(Bold quotations taken from Rian Malan, My Traitor's Heart, 1990, Vintage books.)

this business of community

(The only picture of living in community I have taken thus far.)

One of the exciting elements of this project in Cape Town is that our leadership is committed to the concept of community. Although we are not all living in the same house, we are forming a community in which we have gifts, responsibilities, tasks, and support.

That's all 21st centuryese for: "By this all men will know that you are My disciples, if you love one another." (John 13:35)

The lovely bride of Christ, the church, has done an abysmal job, overall, of letting the world know who we are. We try in every way except love. Without doubt, if the church had followed this one principle since Jesus left, the world would be different today and the perception of God's Family would be much better understood.

Instead, we use community to insulate ourselves--from outsiders and from one another. I found another example in Mphahlele's book (referred to in previous blog), how white South Africans misused the principle of community to divide: (but they are not alone in culpability, please)

The non-white had for years been taught to love his neighbor--the white man . . . While white preachers through sermons broadcast over the radio, told their contented suburban congregations the story of Calvary and individual salvation, white churchgoers felt committed to group attitudes and the maintenance of a mythical white supremacy. Equally, the white preacher felt committed to an ethic he did not dare apply to the necessity of group action against the forces of evil in a setting where such forces have worked themselves up into a savage national attitude said to be based on a Christian sense of justice. (p. 163, Down Second Avenue)

Community gone wrong can be a scary and destructive thing.

Here's the good news:

Yesterday I sat in a network meeting of 22 community transformation workers in various projects all with the goal of helping those less fortunate of a single township, Kayamandi. As I listened to us each tell our name, our group, our focus and vision, I saw the reality of a genuine turn-around. This was a rainbow group, and the accents were clear to almost unintelligible. But they cared.

In the middle of the mix, a young boy's plight came up: Herald's mother (not his real name) had died that morning of AIDS. Herald is nine, he is known by quite a few volunteers in the meeting, he is "in the system."  He has been living with drug-users (tic) and is rumored to be sniffing glue. The glue issue makes him unqualified for a safe house with other children; his location in the township means he may not be taken out; the responsibility of one government department precludes others from reaching in and helping him. The pain and frustration was evident. But the meeting derailed for the amount of time it took for those who knew and cared to come to some kind of decision to intervene.

By this shall all men know . . .

a little apartheid background

Ezekiel Mphahelele wrote Down Second Avenue in 1959, describing growing up under the white supremacist policy, "apartheid." He describes it thus:

It is unfair to ask me to subsist on mission school sermons about Christian conduct and passive resistance in circumstances where it is considered a crime to be decent; where a policeman will run me out of my house at the point of a sten gun when I try to withhold my labor. For years I have been told by white and Black preachers to love my neighbor; love him when there's a bunch of whites who reckon they are Israelites come out of Egypt in obedience to God's order to come and civilize heathens; a bunch of whites who feed on the symbolism of God's race venturing into the desert among the ungodly. For years now I have been thinking it was all right for me to feel spiritually strong after a church service. And now I find it is not the kind of strength that answers the demand of suffering humanity around me. It doesn't even seem to answer the longings of my own heart."

It broke my heart to read Ezekiel's book, his autobiography, written in exile. My only comfort was that that era was past. Apartheid has been broken and replaced with the New South Africa. The horrendous laws and police oppression are over. The rainbow nation is winning over the centuries of bigotry and fear. 

But we haven't won yet. It isn't the end of the story and the fat lady has not sung.

South Africa is still in the midst of violent struggles around economic discrepancies, residual color issues, and opportunists capitalizing on the pain, poverty and shame of others. You name a problem, we have it: human trafficking, sex trafficking, drugs, assaults, rapes, murder, poaching animals to extinction, blood mining . . . and it all seems so much worse in contrast with the beauty of this land.

So it is a huge privilege to be here. I'm reading as much as I can to understand the backgrounds and the stories of the people that I meet. But I am saddened. I am a missionary, the child of missionaries, and I've grown up in the conviction that missionaries are committed to changing the world, advancing the Kingdom, bringing Light. 

But here in South Africa, missionaries did not exercise that freedom. The fear of expulsion from the godless state convinced them it was wiser to "go underground." And they did not preach the good news and release to the captives. Instead, in Mphahlele's words:

. . . before Father Trevor Huddleston came on the scene--and that's only 1943--missionaries had let politics alone and consequently the forces of evil have had a start of about 300 years. During which time missionaries have abetted, connived at or stood aloof from, the white man's total disregard of justice and other human values. Even so, Trevor Huddleston was a lone fighter. The rest of the church in South Africa didn't speak his language.

And that is the setting into which we have now come. Missionaries were the silent partner. The "accomplice after the fact". 

No wonder we don't tell folks we are missionaries here, we call ourselves "charitable volunteers." There is a cargo hold of baggage associated with what the church and missions  have done in the past, either from fear or a desire to be comfortable.

As the scales have fallen from my eyes on this issue, I see even more clearly what a privilege it is to be here. What an opportunity we have to change what has been done: to redefine the Family God and the Kingdom of Heaven for people who have been victimized by the so-called Church. 

Coming in out of the Wind

"Let me be wise to draw from every dispensation of Thy providence the lesson Thou are minded to teach me." --John Baillie

Moving to Stellenbosch has been one of the more pleasant experiences of my life. Through the window I see a sun-baked mountain behind fluttering palm trees, tiny toy vineyards lined immaculately on the slopes. Clay tile roofs complete the picture.

I've stopped asking, "How did we get here?" I don't bother to pinch myself anymore, I'll just get a bruise, and we are still here. Ever wonder what God's got up His sleeve?

The past four years were the most tumultuous and painful in our ministry. Now we are washed up on the shore of a paradise. From this perspective I can see how God used so much in our lives to get us here. Circumstances. Circumstances which brought me to my knees and lower, circumstances which made me long for heaven and escape from earth.

As those circumstances tore my heart apart, I was not seeing in them the compost of a life which would one day produce fruit. I just smelled its acrid stench and felt the burn of its acid. In fact, I am convinced that compost is perhaps the best metaphor for circumstances that a life of faith can understand. We are to use the circumstances of our lives to bring forth the fruit of holiness.

Fruit production is lengthy business, we see a lot of it here in Stellenbosch. Sometimes its smelly and there isn't much to show for the effort right away. Now I can see where I have come from. At the time I saw nothing of the fertilizing effect. My point of view was fragmented; I saw neither the past context nor the future hope, just the present pain. 

I have a new friend, Cecile. Cecile has a radiant face, sparkling eyes, and a great sense of humor. She also has 4% vision in one eye, and a limited area vision in the other which she describes as looking through a gauzy curtain. She has one hand, her left, and her right leg cannot bend at the knee. Twenty-four years ago she was in a horrific accident, her survival was a miracle. She carries the scars of that circumstance throughout her body. But it was the circumstance that brought her to know her Lord Jesus. And while she jokes about her limitations, she says she would not trade her mobility or vision for her friendship with Jesus. 

(Here I am with Cecile and her artist husband, Hannes, in front of the Drakenstein mts.)


Jesus is in the process of making Cecile and me and all of us into a perfect gift to present to His father. We are an organic gift, so He uses compost to maximize our perfection. It is so hard for us to see that the wind and rough weather beating us down are to strengthen us and grow our roots deep. Now I can thank Him for those four tough years, as I see the bigger view. Cecile can thank Him for the painful months of recovery and the limitations she has endured for over two decades. No one can meet her and not see that she is full of the joy of life.

Now that I'm in out of the wind (not to say I won't find myself in it again at any moment), I can appreciate what St Francis meant when we said: 

That has always been and still is most dear to me and more sweet and more acceptable which pleases the LORD my God most to let happen in me and with me.

God is pleased to let compost happen to me so I may produce the fruit of holiness. I have to stand back from fretting about things, grieving over what I cannot fix, and come in out of the wind. He has a plan that includes the past, the present and the future. It is whole, not fragmented.

And one day we will wake up. The bad dream will be over. It will be morning.

Forgiveness in Relationship

Last September as I perused Garland Library’s shelves for books on South Africa, one title grabbed me, so I plopped it on top of the three biographies of Nelson Mandela I’d selected.  I couldn’t possibly pronounce the author’s name (Antjie Krog), but a title like Country of My Skull, and a quick flip through assured me of a riveting read.

Now I have read three of her post-modern, lyrical and poetic works. An Afrikaans poet, philosopher, anti-apartheid activist, and radio journalist, Antjie (pronounced AnKee) has won my admiration and set my mind to thinking. Her two subsequent works: A Change of Tongue and Begging to Be Black continue the line of thought and questions that Antjie began in Country of My Skull. That work was her journal interwoven with three years of reporting on the Truth and Reconciliation Commission requested by Nelson Mandela and led by Bishop Desmond Tutu.

Antjie covers a lot of territory in her works and is not concerned with resolving as much as understanding. Her perception of “ubuntu”, that wonderful quality of the African community life which Tutu chose as seminal for the work to be accomplished in  the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, is broad and deep. Her respect for the cultures which Afrikanerdom dominated and diminished is admirable. I highly recommend her work for insight into the hearts and mind-set of the Afrikaaners as they hewed their own culture and history out of the rough landscape of Southern Africa’s mountains, karoos and vast veld: caught between the mighty British empire and the tangle of tribes inhabiting subSaharan Africa.

One brilliant gem she comes away with is the breadth of what forgiveness means. Believe me, I’ve read a number of books written by Christian authors (some theologians) on forgiveness. But I think Antjie has captured a key of the truly Biblical element, and sadly, attributed it almost exclusively to African culture.

“Forgiving is therefore never separate from reconciliation, but the first personal step. It demands a response from the forgiven one, to change, to become human, to share. Forgiveness is thus not an uninformed embrace of evil, it is not a miracle brought about by an individual, but an interconnected act that makes a changed relationship possible, a future, a new way of being.” (p. 212 Begging to be Black.)

a cupful of death

"What's lost is nothing to what's found, and all the death that ever was, set next to life, would scarcely fill a cup."
--Buechner


Last month I lost two friends. I didn't misplace them. They died. It was a grievous month.


Becky is like a sister, growing up in Korea with me. I lived with her family before there was a hostel for MKs in Seoul. Her family is my family. She fought breast cancer and survived brilliantly. Then non-metastatic liver cancer came and took her away. Another fight, not as long. It gave us time to grieve, so we thought. But it still hit like a two by four when Uncle Larry called my cell as I rode along in the car, Becky was finally free.


Koos is a South African friend from our Mozambique days. He and his wife lived in Quelimane for years alongside us. He was a woodcrafter par excellence. He made the beautiful doors in our home. We enjoyed braais with his family. Our children went to the same Portuguese school and we mothers fought the same cultural struggles with it. The anopheles mosquito got him. Cerebral malaria. And we long-timers, we were the ones who were proactive and aggressive whenever there was a suspicion. But it got him and Retha wondered and blamed herself: "if only--"


For many years our hearts grieved because Koos could not make sense of our confidence in God. We tried the Experience Faith book with him and his family. When we discussed Abraham leaving home and family for he knew not where, all Koos could say was, "He was crazy, man." End of discussion. But in the end, Koos got crazy, too, and handed over his life and business to the Lord. After we left.


So here I am, remembering two friends, both in a place I eagerly look forward to.  I affirm that what I've lost is nothing to what they've found. And I will find. This death stuff, it's a drop in the bucket compared to life. But we are the cups, and we don't know much outside our rims.


So I miss Becky and Koos. And I tear up, remembering the litany of those whom I've lost, and miss terribly, beginning with my grandmother back in Korea when I found her cold and still one Sunday morning.


One day I'm going to set my cup of death next to life and see what a pittance it truly was.