I don’t know about you but growing up I believed that old people and other people got cancer. My gran passed away from cancer when I was in my early teens. So I knew cancer existed. I just didn’t think that cancer would be part of the story of someone young, or of someone I love. I guess that’s the first thing I’ve learnt about cancer. It doesn’t discriminate. It will attack rich or poor, [...]
About two weeks ago i published an email from a friend of mine who is white, male, South African and presently living in the UK who had some thoughts, feelings, questions and frustrations about life in South Africa and some of the conversations we'd been having on here. i shared his email under the guise of 'Bob' and invited a few of my friends to respond, all of which you can catch up with over [...]
So many of you will know by now that i wrote a book. My buddy Brad went online yesterday to buy a copy from the UK Amazon store. Did i mention that my book is called 'i, church' and, somewhat strangely enough, it is about the church? What was surprising to Brad, and later to me, was that alongside my book in a if-you-buy-this-you-should-probably-also-buy-this kind of way was 'Fifty Shades of Grey', the erotic romance [...]
Many of you will know of No_bob, the world’s most famous stuffed dolphin. But you may not know the story. In 2000 i flew to the UK to earn some money teaching [due to an unfortunate police clearance incident i only ended up doing five days of actual teaching which was a high-or-low-light of itself and mostly looked after old people or University professors, who were about equally competent] so that i could join Youth [...]
Another guest on Friday was our mate Portal Pete who has moved with his wife, Sarah, into Manenberg and is running a drug rehabilitation program among other things, and he had these words to say: Great food etc. It didn’t feel awkward to me. It felt OK. Living and working in what some call missional community in Manenberg, I feel and cause offence on a fairly regular basis. We’re learning that offence most often leads [...]
i just finished reading this incredible book that was recommended to me by my good friend, Steve Graybill, who has travelled to Israel on multiple occasions and i feel has a fairly good idea of what goes on over there. i was challenged on my blog a few months ago about not knowing what was going on with the whole Israeli/Palestinian conflict and it was totally true. It's one of those things, as when i was [...]
My lovely wife Val was of course the hostess for Friday's dinner and deep dive into Race, Boundary and Location conversation that i wrote about over here, and she shares some of her thoughts from the evening: The idea is simple: gather good people around good food and good discussion and see what happens. So we did. We turned off technology and tuned in to people. It was messy and it was chaotic, it was painful and it [...]
i am loving being a part of this Tandem Blogging series with 8 other very creative and very different individuals. There is the dual satisfaction of having a very focused piece to write on a topic i didn't choose [which is incredible for creativity] and then also the thrill of bouncing from post to post once we've released them, to see how differently each writer interpreted the title each week. Last week was my favourite [...]
Daniel was another of the guests from Friday's dinner and deep dive into Race, Boundary and Location conversation that i wrote about over here, and he shares some of his thoughts from the evening: We need to learn to listen to one another. Such a simple concept, "I stop talking, you talk", but very hard to execute. On Friday, Brett invited me to a dinner with a number of other peeps from different ages, colour, [...]
[Disclaimer: while in Americaland, the term “coloured” is a strongly negative term, in South Africa there is a unique group of people who have come from a heritage of different cultures but now have developed their own distinct culture. They are neither black nor white, nor are they mixed race, and they would call themselves ‘coloured'.] Marriage and Melanin “You are the most beautiful girl I have ever seen. We will make it through this.” The [...]