What makes a person? What makes me, me? For me I’ve struggled with identity for my entire Life – one of the biggest struggles I’ve had over my identity is the one over ‘race’ (now many would consider it strange for a white guy to struggle with identity over race and don’t get me wrong – I’ve never thought I am not white) the reasons being that I was brought up (My mom assisted [...]
Wow. Boom. Things just got real people. Having just witnessed Simon Peter's 'Life or Death' declaration of absolute faithfulness to Jesus at the Last Supper, we now have this follow up story where Peter is denying Jesus left, right and centre... until suddenly, the piercing sound of a rooster is heard... Join me as i work through Mark 14.66-72: [For the next passage which sees Jesus standing before Pontius Pilate, click [...]
I woke up on election day, my thumbs ready to be inked and itching to say something to challenge people to get up and vote seeing as a friend of mine had just expressed disinterest in politics and thus voting itself. As I lay in bed contemplating if it would be better to sleep the morning away and vote later, my brother sent me a message; a speech allegedly delivered by PW Botha in 1985. [...]
One of the most insidious forms of racism or paternalism is to take the voice of another away from them. I do not intend to speak for black people in this post and so rob them of their own dignity and humanity. You see, I am white and so I can only ever speak as a white male. While I can resist speaking for another I can choose to speak with another so adding strength [...]
Things that I wish I could say to my single friends…. When I saw Brett request this I thought “pick me pick me”! Then I started thinking about how to write this with honesty & candour but in a way which honours my husband, marriage and my friends. I am so aware that I am still VERY new at this – Charles and I only got married 6 months ago (on the 9th November to be [...]
As we have started talking about different aspects of Race on my blog, one area that quickly came to mind was that of mixed race/culture relationships. Hard to believe that this was illegal when i was growing up. And that it was normal for it to be so. And even when it wasn't, it took a bit of a while for it to become more of a regular [less stared at] thing and so i imagine [...]
As a nation we are celebrating 20 years of democracy and while there is still a lot that has to be done in this country of ours that bears the horrible scars of Apartheid, I am still proud that we are here. It means something because at least we are not where we used to be. There are still many conversations that still need to be had, of course and the sooner we get talking, [...]
I started out by inviting a bunch of my Single Friends to share some thoughts they really wanted their Married Friends to hear, consider, think about and respond to and some really great posts came out of that, which you can read over here. When someone gets married, the dynamic between them and their single friends always changes, sometimes more than others. especially when it is the friendship between a guy and a girl [yes, [...]
Hello. I'm Shana, and I have a husband. He's Carl. We haven't been married very long but we are married nonetheless. I'm not really a writer, so I'm not really going to make this sound good or write particularly well, but over the past 2 and a half years of marriage I've been putting together a mental list of things I'd like my single friends to know. Here goes (all harshness unintended): 1) When your [...]
Where on earth do I even start with this topic? “What I want my white friends to know” seems like such a direct attack to some of my closest friends and those who I am still to meet. I absolutely love my friends so how could I write this? Then I thought about how much I really want to say some things and I sat down to type this. First of all I come [...]