This past week i was contacted by a Facebook friend who told me he had been following me since my Truth mag days [an amazing magazine i used to write for]. Which was a long, long time ago in a galaxy much like ours. Him and his wife have been out of the country for three years [dejavu] and have returned and are living in Cape Town and trying to educate themselves around topics of [...]
About a week ago i was hanging out with a group of friends discussing some quite incredible stories of generosity that we had all been involved in this past year. Each person in the group was connected to a person in the story of generosity although the majority of the group didn't know the people involved. The stories ranged from educational assistance to helping start up a township business to paying for a vehicle to [...]
i have so-called white skin. i don't hate my skin colour. i hate that it has been elevated above the skin colours of so many other people. i hate that some people see themselves as 'better than' simply based on the accident of their skin colour. When i talk about defeating whiteness that is what i mean. It is not at all about hating the skin i, or people who look like me, have or [...]
What do the spaces you inhabit say about you? On Saturday i shared an invitation with my white friends on Facebook: White friends. Do this experiment. Be aware of the spaces you occupy today. And tomorrow. Then take a moment to reflect Sunday night. How many of those spaces (gym, dinner table, sports club, restaurant, church, coffee hangout) were 100% filled with white people? (except those who were serving you/cleaning up) How many of those [...]
i wonder if there might be something South Africa could learn from the story of Zacchaeus in the Bible. As a much-hated tax collector known for robbing and cheating the people he has an encounter with Jesus and it changes his life so significantly that he makes amends with his money and gives back to those he wronged. But in some cases we see that he gives back four times as much to those he [...]
...for they will have to wear their own hand-made crap. Or something. This whole appropriation thing is quite confusing to me and feels a little dangerous with the chief danger being hypocrisy. It feels like a speck plank thing. If you are going to accuse someone else of appropriating your culture then you better be well sure that all the stuff you have was made by "your people" whatever that means. When i was a [...]
Who are your 'my people'? i was watching a typical exchange about some race issue on the book of face-offs yesterday when something struck me... The man commenting - who happened to be an afrikaner - said something about "my people" - and the light bulb went on and started pulsating to a disco beat. There is a very real problem for me when your "my people" all look the same or speak the same language [...]
Jessica Jones is returning to Netflix and i couldn't be more stoked. One of the latest in a series of Marvel comic crossovers, Jessica Jones was most recently seen alongside Luke Cage, Daredevil and Iron Fist as part of the Defenders team trying desperately to save New York. It is a very dark series and one of the main reasons i stayed with it was probably because David Tennant [my all-time favourite portrayer of [...]
i was reminded of this Franciscan blessing by the book of faces this morning: i don't think any group/church/organisation/person will ever get it completely right - except Jesus actually, i find it very difficult to fault anything He did or said and i'd be open to having conversation with anyone who did - but the Franciscans seem to come up repeatedly as people who did pretty well. i'm sure Saint Francis of Assisi had [...]
After asking for a selection of recommended books to read about or by South Africans, my sister-in-law asked me if i could do the same thing for children. Which i did. And wow, did you all respond... i'm not sure all of these fit into the South African/African ask but a lot of them do and this just seems to be a list of super amazing books for young ones: Megan Furniss: Good Night Stories [...]
