Zimbabwe election results 2013

23 years ago today in Kuwait, we faced what we believed was not going to happen.
It got ugly. It still is ugly for the people of the region who were "liberated" from dictatorship.

Today in Zimbabwe we possibly face what we weren't expecting.
Relatively, however sad we are as a people, it could be a lot worse.
This feels more like 1980 than 1990. And there are as many looking to leave today as there were then.

In 1980, the part of the world I lived in really thought that the name to watch was Muzorewa. We did not really know much of Mugabe.
We were wrong.  History suggests that those high up in other parts of the world knew more than we did of what was going on. All we knew, or believed, was that this was not good news.

Many left.
Choices are not always easy, but all power to those to make the hard decisions; choices to go, choices to stay.  We all made the decisions, and we have lived with them.

For the first decade or so, it looked promising
True, there was significant genocide in the rural south of the country, but I am in an urban area in the north.
And the buzz word was "Reconciliation", and it looked promising
Later, things changed.

What will be the buzz word this time?
For those who stay, what will they face?

What has really changed?
Are we still trusting human beings to be our hope?

David, in Psalm 20 reminds me

Now I know that the Lord saves his anointed;
    he will answer him from his holy heaven
    with the saving might of his right hand.
Some trust in chariots and some in horses,
    but we trust in the name of the Lord our God.
They collapse and fall,
    but we rise and stand upright.

There is no useful hope in dictators, liberators or democratisers.
There is no useful hope in elections, election results or elected officials.

We trust in the name of the Lord our God, and we will rise and stand upright.
 - whether we feel it or not

The Easter message in “Life of Pi”

If you, like me, have seen and been blown away by the movie “Life of Pi”, I can recommend that you read the book! It reads beautifully and is, in many ways, even better – as you’d expect. The only time movies or stage plays exceed the original work on which they are based is when the original benefits from a haircut to get into two hours.

Full respect to Victor Hugo. He was an amazing writer. But the Schönberg/Boublil “Les Miserables” is one such rare example of a great book becoming a stunning stage show and now, in turn, movie.

But back to “Life of Pi”.

There is a scene in the movie where Pi discovers Christ while visiting a tea plantation. In the book, this is chapter 17.  If you haven’t seen/read “Life of Pi”, let me mention that Pi, a Hindu by birth and environment, has a full first name of Piscine, and his father runs a zoo. In this part of the story he is meeting with one Father Martin, a Catholic priest

That’s enough to explain the following extract.

Catholics have a reputation for severity, for judgment that comes down heavily. My experience with Father Martin was not at all like that. He was very kind. He served me tea and biscuits in a tea set that tinkled and rattled at every touch; he treated me like a grown-up; and he told me a story. Or rather, since Christians are so fond of capital letters, a Story.

And what a story. The first thing that drew me in was disbelief. What? Humanity sins but it’s God’s Son who pays the price? I tried to imagine Father saying to me, “Piscine, a lion slipped into the llama pen today and killed two llamas. Yesterday another one killed a black buck. Last week two of them ate the camel. The week before it was painted storks and grey herons. And who’s to say for sure who snacked on our golden agouti? The situation has become intolerable. Something must be done. I have decided that the only way the lions can atone for their sins is if I feed you to them.”

“Yes, Father, that would be the right and logical thing to do. Give me a moment to wash up.”

“Hallelujah, my son.”

“Hallelujah, Father.”

What a downright weird story. What peculiar psychology.

I asked for another story, one that I might find more satisfying. Surely this religion had more than one story in its bag–religions abound with stories. But Father Martin made me understand that the stories that came before it–and there were many–were simply prologue to the Christians. Their religion had one Story, and to it they came back again and again, over and over. It was story enough for them.

I was quiet that evening at the hotel.

That a god should put up with adversity, I could understand. The gods of Hinduism face their fair share of thieves, bullies, kidnappers and usurpers. What is the Ramayana but the account of one long, bad day for Rama? Adversity, yes. Reversals of fortune, yes. Treachery, yes. But humiliation ? Death ? I couldn’t imagine Lord Krishna consenting to be stripped naked, whipped, mocked, dragged through the streets and, to top it off, crucified–and at the hands of mere humans, to boot. I’d never heard of a Hindu god dying. Brahman Revealed did not go for death. Devils and monsters did, as did mortals, by the thousands and millions–that’s what they were there for. Matter, too, fell away. But divinity should not be blighted by death. It’s wrong. The world soul cannot die, even in one contained part of it. It was wrong of this Christian God to let His avatar die. That is tantamount to letting a part of Himself die. For if the Son is to die, it cannot be fake. If God on the Cross is God shamming a human tragedy, it turns the Passion of Christ into the Farce of Christ. The death of the Son must be real. Father Martin assured me that it was. But once a dead God, always a dead God, even resurrected. The Son must have the taste of death forever in His mouth. The Trinity must be tainted by it; there must be a certain stench at the right hand of God the Father. The horror must be real. Why would God wish that upon Himself? Why not leave death to the mortals? Why make dirty what is beautiful, spoil what is perfect?

Love. That was Father Martin’s answer.

That’s how insane Good Friday is!

That is how much our Father wants to save His errant “lions”.

It is too easy to take Calvary for granted. It’s just another event in the Church year. It’s commemorated in just another Communion service.

It is radical.

It is God loving abundantly

Pitiful NGO or the Bride of Christ? It's all about the Cross

In his first public mass after accepting the Ring of the Fisherman, Francis I is reported to have said:

"What happens when children build sand castles on the beach? It all comes down."
"If we don't proclaim Jesus, we become a pitiful NGO, not the bride of the Lord," he said.
"When we walk without the cross, and when we preach about Christ without the cross, we are not disciples of the Lord. We are mundane. We are bishops, priests, cardinals, popes, but we are not disciples of the Lord."
http://m.apnews.mobi/ap/db_6776/contentdetail.htm?contentguid=qlsj3cbN

I think I am going to like this Papacy!

Poll Rolling

Yesterday's Herald headline - "Poll roll-out begins" http://bit.ly/YtqsxT

To which my mind responds...


(Image source: http://bit.ly/10K4fPf)

Constitutional Referendum - 16 March 2013

Yes, I have an opinion
No, I do not have the right to express it
Yes, I think you should exercise your right if you have it
No, I don't think it is perfectly good or perfectly bad
Yes, I understand the difference between rights and guarantees
No, I don't expect all rights to become deliverables
Yes, I think it matters
No, I don't think it's of supreme importance
Yes, the sun will rise on Sunday
No, I won't be disappointed it it doesn't

Clam the way and the truth and the life

I'm sure it's not deliberate, but the electronic version of Rick Warren's "Purpose Driven Life" that I read on my phone has a thought provoking typo.  This morning I read that

Jesus said 'clam the way and the truth and the life."

...which makes an interesting mental image anyway you open it.

I first read this as "Claim the way".

Now, in a society (indeed, a continent) where various flavours of miracle focused prosperity teachings are endemic, the thought of whether Jesus could have meant us to "claim the way and the truth and the life" caused me to stop and think. 
What if this wasn't a typo? 
What if it was a paraphrase or even an alternative translation? 
Could there be another light here on man's (minuscule) part in the great salvation plan? 
What if God has provided the way, and like Nemo's seagulls, we just had to call "Mine!"?

The thought of naming and claiming not just material goods and "blessings" but the ultimate blessing of Salvation was disturbing but intriguing
But it was not a thought that came to a conclusion - mainly because I started writing it up for this blog and saw that in fact the word was "clam", not "claim".

'clam the way and the truth and the life".

How do I clam something?
Take the truth of who Jesus is. 
Crack it open, dig it out, savour it, remember it, never be satisfied, keep going back for more.

Rejoice for a comrade deceased

I have done quite a bit of thinking in the last few hours.
One thought that has kept coming to mind is from the pen of Charles Wesley:

Rejoice for a comrade deceased;
Our loss is his infinite gain;
A soul out of prison released.
And freed from his bodily chain:
With songs let us follow his flight,
And mount with his spirit above:
Escaped to the mansions of light,
And lodged in the Eden of love.

(My Salvationist roots are showing again! Wesley rejoiced for a
"brother". "Comrade" sings better!)

We don't think like that any more!
Since the word went around that one of the leaders in our church had
died, there have been a number of comments to the effect that we cannot
be sad because he is in a better place. But we don't in this 21st
century, seem to grasp the fullness of our Heavenly Hope as our
predecessors in the faith did.

Maybe we don't see heaven in all its glory because we don't see earth in
all its horror.
Maybe we see heaven as "a better place", but not as an "infinite gain".
Maybe we need to stop stumbling to keep up with a post-modern world
where right and wrong are relative lifestyle choices and stand again on
the Truth that this life is not good.
- to recognise again that we live in bodily chains.
- to stop paying lip service to Paul's pained exclamation: "What a
wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body that is subject to
death?" (Rom 7:24)
- to stop thinking of life as fixable and acknowledge that death is
indeed "escape to the mansions of light" from the real murk of this life.

This world is not our home. And it's not a nice place. At our peril we
have come to be content with this fallen world and everything that comes
with it.

This world is not fixable. No greening of the environment or giving of
rights to the marginalised, however worthy, will in and of themselves
make the difference.
But that is not to say that we have no hope.
Exactly the opposite.
Seeing the stark horror of the world and the infinite glory of Heaven
reveals the immensity of the hope we do possess.

With Paul again, "we do not want you to be uninformed, brothers, about
those who are asleep, that you may not grieve as others do who have no
hope. For since we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so,
through Jesus, God will bring with him those who have fallen asleep." (1
Thes 4:13-14)

There is a glorious hope! (There is too an abhorrent horror for those
who have no hope, but that, beyond a call to intercede for them, is
another topic)
There is a heaven to gain and an earth to shun

'Tis Jesus, the First and the Last,
Whose Spirit shall guide us safe home,
We'll praise Him for all that is past!
And trust Him for all that's to come".
(Joseph Hart)