Last night was the Passion 2016 Worship Conference in Cape Town. Earlier in the day i had been at a significant meeting with the young folks from Disrupting Whiteness which i reflected on in this somewhat controversially titled post, 'Sodomy: A South African Love Story' which reminded us of an earlier definition of Sodomy which was that 'The people of Sodom pursued lives of careless ease and ignored the poor on their doorstep.' Which we see [...]
Yesterday i wrote a post titled, 'Before you favourite, RT, forward...' which started with Back to the Future memes [not serious at all] and ended with alleged swimming lesson racism [very serious]. The focus being on people on various social media platforms sharing stories that arrive as 'Breaking News' or are sensational or emotionally-charged, before they have bothered to check whether they are authentic or not. i want to take it a little bit further today, [...]
Growing up in Cape Town in a largely coloured area, the perceptions about white and black people were always negative. So naturally I took that on as the norm (as that was my context). I was only in high school when I was first exposed to white folks. All my teachers were white and they knew everything and seem to have everything. I basically unconsciously just ended up assimilating into that thinking that white must [...]
i mean, how can you not love that, right? Coming home to Cape Town was an easy one. But leaving Oakland was also a less easy one than we may have thought. It was surprising to both tbV and myself just how much like home it felt to us. Which was great. And had a lot to do with the people and some of the places. Especially getting to stay for a month with Aaron [...]
One of my favourite weekends of the year, when i've been privileged enough to be a part of it [which is quite often!], is the weekend known as October Leadership. i have been part of at least ten of them and spoken on about 8 of those and it has never failed to be a life [and hopefully school etc] transforming weekend. Run by Scripture Union, the purpose of October Leadership has been gathering together [...]
This is a reblogged post courtesy of Susan Hayden who posts some worthwhile musings over at Disco Pants & A Mountain - you should check her out... but this felt really relevant to some of our recent race conversations and so i asked her if i could add it here... When you’re told a coffee shop is the best coffee shop in the world and that coffee shop is not in New York or [...]
American-African meets African-American. We met at university; both of us were on student leadership for our respective halls. Sherrell’s from Durham, NC. James is from Cape Town, South Africa (Well, mostly). Naturally, there are a lot of cultural differences we’ve discovered along the way. For starters, we have different likes and dislikes, some of them diametrically opposite each other, ranging from the superficial, like our tastes in music and to how we like to [...]
last nite i was invited by some new friends we've made here to join the Oakland City Watch team in a walk they do around the neighborhood [we live on 61st Ave and we walked around the streets closer to 90th so not crazy far away] that has three messages for the people of the community: # We care! # We want to see an end to violence, especially gun violence! # How can we [...]
okay, so that title doesn't apply AT ALL here, in fact it the opposite of applies, but it was likely to draw a lot more readers than 'i like my friends' and look, there you are so hi! arrived back home after a good 32 hours or so of travelling [if you exclude the New Jersey/New York trip we took with airforce Jon to get to the airport] from JFK to Dubai for eight hour [...]
so for friends back home there have been hints and allegations [a loose affiliation of millionaires and billionaires and baby] and subtle innuendos as to what might be pertaining to the future for the andersons after this year... for those of you who have been following semi-closely, the beautiful Valerie [tbV] and i have been living, working and ministering with the Simple Way Christian non-profit organisation in Kensington, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, Americaland since about June of [...]
