Jesus Feminist: Part Unwelcome Questions

So i recently finished reading the book Jesus Feminist by one of my favourite writery people, Sarah Bessey and thought i should share some of the highlight/challenging/interesting moments for me:

In chapter three, titled ‘Tangled-Up Roots’, Sarah starts the chapter with this great George Carlin quote:

Scratch any cynic and you will find a disappointed idealist

And then, speaking from a time when she was employed full-time and realising that women’s ministry was largely aimed at stay-at-home moms, she writes this:

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‘During this season of my life, the more I learned about Jesus, the more I struggled with the iterations of Christianity around me. Much of what I saw or experienced in the modern church didn’t match up with what I thought I knew about the ageless God. My growing disenchantment was not limited to women’s roles in the church, though: these “lady issues” were merely one branch in the thicket of my frustrations with the Church.

It started with the small questions, the easy ones to stuff into the closet and ignore. I could drown the questions and the cognitive dissonance out if I quoted enough Bible verses, if I went to enough church services, if i got busy “doing hard things for Jesus,” made another casserole for another neighbour, led another youth retreat, hosted another Bible study, bought another leather-bound devotional with an unfurling flower on the cover, quieted down more, tried harder to fit into te getting-smaller-by-the-day understanding of following Jesus.

But my questions and doubts has the inconvenient habit of poking out the straining door, gathering friends, growing and intensifying as steadily as if my resolute denial of their existence fed and watered them.

I was drawn towards a life of redemptive peacemaking and justice seeking, yet the churches of my context and traditions were in a strange collusion with politics and just-war philosophy as the Iraq War began. I struggled with the cultural rhetoric against immigrants, homosexuals, artists, welfare recipients, the poor, non-Americans, and anyone who looked different or lived differently than the expectation. Cultural mores were passing as biblical mandates. The give-me-more-more-more prosperity gospel didn’t match up with my growing commitment to contentment and simple living. I wanted my pro-life ethic to encompass all of human life.

For the first time in my life, I was reading and learning about the Church’s mandate to care for the poor. I was reading voraciously about global issues such as clean water, community development, war, human trafficking, economics, disaster relief, the AIDS crisis, unjust systemic evils. Meanwhile, church budgets made room for a brand-new light show and a kickin’ sound system or a trip to Disneyland or a video venue in a saturated upscale neighbourhood – all in an effort to practice creative-experience marketing. And the rich got richer. The more I learned about the life and world and tragedies thumping along beyond pour seemingly missing-the-point building programs and Christian schools and drive-by missionary work, the more I ached and grieved and repented of my own sin and blindness. I questioned is all, including my own commitment to propping up this system.

The cracks were ricocheting and multiplying across my heart now, and when I turned to the Church for answers, I did not feel my questions were welcome. This may have been my own pride and willful blindness, but there didn’t seem to be room for me as a questioning woman within the system, as a seeker. I was straining to keep my barrage of questions stuffed in the closet. My stubborn faith was not lining up with the big, broad Church’s priorities and focus. The whole women-can’t-do-such-and-such or here’s-what-a-biblical/true/real-woman-does or submit-and-stay-home-and-have-babies subtext? Well, add that to the getting-bigger-by-the-day pile.’

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Naturally what follows is a bit of a crash and Sarah and her husband eventually left full-time vocational ministry and embarked on a ‘journey through the wilderness of my wonderings with a seen-it-all-before smirk on my face  and a profound ache in my soul’.

She continues a little later with this:

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‘We embraced a new understanding of church and community, of vocation and ministry, of organic faith and missional living. We were lonely. And then we began to heal, slowly at first, then faster and faster.

“You can’t be a Christian by yourself,” writes Sara Miles. Me? I tried.

I tried to be a Christian by myself. And in my deepest hurts from the Body of Christ, it did help to cocoon away in the in-between space for a while. It helped to step away from the institutions of church in a self-imposed blackout from the programs, from the self-perpetuating machine, from the politics, the religion, the expectations, the behaviour modification, the CEO-style leadership courses, the unstable pedestals for pastors and the way that the grind of modern ministry life seems to chew up and spit out again, and the easy consumer spirituality.

The wilderness transformed me in a way no “spiritual high” or certainty or mountaintop moment had ever done. I shed a lot of performance anxiety in those “in between” years. I reconciled what I believed and why. I embraced the glorious kaleidoscope of God at work in the global world. And most importantly, the wilderness was the birthplace of my intimacy with God. Jonathan Martin writes, “far from being a punishment, judgement, or a curse, the wilderness is a gift. It’s where we can experience the primal delight of being fully known and delighted in by God.”

I loosened my grip on my opinions. I entered recovery for being such a know-it-all. I stopped expecting everyone to experience God or church or life like I thought it should be done. In fact, I stopped using the word should about God altogether, I sought God, and He was faithful to answer me. I came to know Him as “Abba” – a Daddy. He set me free from crippling approval addiction, from my Evangelical Hero Complex, from the fear of man. He bathed my feet, bound my wounds, gave rest to my soul, restored the joy of church and community to our lives. I learned the difference between critical thinking and just being plain critical. And I found out He is more than enough, always will be more than enough – yesterday, today, forever.

Now, all these years later, I marvel. I marvel because God was there in the pain. I marvel because this life we lead back home in Canada is not what we would have imagined for our lives, but it’s so much better. And I marvel because I hold almost all of it loosely in my hand now, all of it but this: the nature, identity, soul, action, and character of God is love – lovelovelovelovelovelovelove.

Everything was resurrected on that truth. And now for me, faith is less of a brick edifice of belief and doctrine and right answers than it is a wide-open sky ringed with pine trees black against a cold sunset, an altar, a welcome, bread and wine, an unfathomable ferocious love, and a profound sense of my belovedness. ‘

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And more. Sarah talks about how her healing story won’t necessarily be your healing story so there’s no set formula she can write down that everyone just needs to apply to their own lives. But later on she writes this line which stuck out for me:

Hurry wounds a questioning soul.

And the chapter ends later with these inspiring words:

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‘My water in the desert arrived in cups fashioned by the hands of those who love the gospel. I found, right under my nose, people who love God and love others; their lives were a smelling-salts wake-up experience of grace. Sometimes they were the same people I lived alongside during those years of wondering and isolation in Texas. My loss is that, in my pride, I didn’t see them there at the time. Everywhere I look now, I see disciples who forgive and serve without fanfare or book deals, working quietly for justice and mercy. They love the unlovable, the marginalized, the hopeless; they wash dishes and raise babies; they work in Surrey and in Port-au-Prince and San Antonio because of their great love for God. They believe Jesus actually meant all that stuff He spoke while here on earth, so they are on a mission; they are peacemakers.

Jesus said, “You must begin with your own life-giving lives. It’s who you are, not what you say and do, that counts. Your true being brims over into true words and deeds.” You cannot be full to the brim with Christ’s love and peace without spilling over into the lives of others. You learn how to love by being loved. You yearn to heal once you’ve been healed. We receive goodness and bread, and them, of course, we want to point every other hungry beggar on the road to the source.’

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[If you missed the Intro to this book, click here]

For more from Sarah Bessey, get hold of her book, Jesus Feminist, or check out her website over here, or you can find her on the Twitterer @sarahbessey

Jesus Feminist: Part Intro

Sarah Bessey is one of my favourite people on the Twitterer.

She is a Canadian who loves Jesus and pretty much any time i have read one of her blog pieces i resonate deeply with it and really feel that she writes both truthfully but also lovingly [often a tough mix to get just right] and so she is one of the few go-to blog people i have. Others being Nate Pyle in a similar way [truth and humility, far  too rare in a Christian leader] and then also Jamie the Very Worst Missionary [who i don’t always agree with, although i mostly do and when i do it is usually with loud cheering and huge smiles cos of her in-your-face presentation].

So i was super excited to FINALLY get hold of her book, Jesus Feminist, which i’d been wanting to read for years but never made any steps towards until my sister came to visit from the States and  suggested it as a gift she might want to bring me.

In chapter 1 as Sarah explains part of her journey, she writes:

‘At the core, feminism simply consists of the radical notion that women are people, too. Feminism only means we champion the dignity, rights, responsibilities, and glories of women as equal in importance – not greater than, but certainly not less than – to those of men, and we refuse discrimination against women.

Several years ago, when I began to refer to myself as a feminist, a few Christians raised their eyebrows and asked, “What kind of feminist exactly?” Off the top of my head, I laughed and said, “Oh, a Jesus feminist!” It stuck, in a cheeky sort of way, and now I call myself a Jesus feminist because to me, the qualifier means I am a feminist precisely because of my life-long commitment to Jesus and His Way.’

And a few pages later she nails home the point:

‘After years of reading the Gospel and the full canon of Scripture, here is, very simply, what I learned about Jesus and the ladies. He loves us.

He loves us. On our own terms. He treats us as equals to the men around Him; He listens; He does not belittle; He honours us; He challenges us; He teaches us; He includes us – calls us all beloved. Gloriously, this flies in the face of the cultural expectations of His time – and even our own time. Scholar David Joel Hamilton calls Jesus’ words and actions towards women “controversial, provocative, even revolutionary.”

Jesus loves us.

In a time when women were almost silent or invisible in literature, Scripture affirms and celebrates woman. Women were a part of Jesus’ teaching, part of His life. Women were there for all of it.’

i completely resonate with the heart and message of the book, which might be why i was a little bit disappointed with it. Which is a hard and horrible thing to say about the book of someone i admire and respect so much [believe me, having just written a book, it really does feel in some ways like putting your baby out there for everyone to comment on, or not].

BUT, i think i know why.

THIS BOOK WILL BE INCREDIBLE IN THE RIGHT HANDS

i have identified two reasons why i may not have enjoyed ‘Jesus Feminist’ as much as i hoped to and none of them have anything to do with it not being a good book.

# The one reason is that i already think so much of what Sarah is talking about in the book whereas for people who still think in outdated, patriarchal-society-enhanced ways this will either be a breath of fresh air [women] or a hugely challenging read [men] but really good for both of them. i didn’t need any convincing and yet i think the book does really well if you are stuck in a mindset that believes that in the church men are more important than women or should have higher status.

# The main reason though is what i would call the Terry Pratchett syndrome. i love Terry Pratchett and he is my favourite read-for-entertainment author. i was fortunate enough to start with ‘The Colour of Magic’ which is his first Discworld novel and read them largely in order and then suddenly, around the time of ‘Guards Guards!’, ‘Moving Pictures’ and ‘Pyramids’ [all three of which i read close together] he suddenly jumped to another level and just got increasingly better and better. Then one day i reread ‘The Colour of Magic’ and it seemed so bad in comparison, just because Pratchett had gotten so good.

That’s what i feel with Sarah Bessey. It is not that anything is particularly wrong with ‘Jesus Feminist’. But it’s just that i discovered her through her writing after that, and it has been a couple of years and she has just gotten so much better.

So for any women out there who are feeling ‘less than’ or ‘insignificant’ in the church, this is a great book for you to be reading. If you know someone who struggles with that, then buy them a copy and stick it in their hands – it might very well be life-changing. But if you are someone who is on the same page with that conversation then i would highly recommend following Sarah on the Twitterer which you can do @sarahbessey or bookmarking her blog over here as one worth visiting regularly. In a world with so many voices and people and posts and too little time, Sarah Bessey is someone who, at the moment, is one of my favourite people to watch and listen to and learn from.

i have a bunch of turned over pages in her book and so i imagine, when i get a chance, i’ll be sharing a few more extracts, cos there really was some great stuff in it…

[For a passage by Sarah Bessey on Unwelcome Questions & What Happens after you Crash?, click here]

Okay we get it… now what?

My friend Megan just drew my attention to this most excellent article by Max Du Preez titled ‘Let go of the anger’ with a little warning disclaimer that i should not read the comments. [Honestly, why would i do that to myself? And yes now EVERYthing in me wants to read the comments – thankx Megs!]

Do yourself a favour – go read the whole article, and then come back here. i will wait.

[waits]

Ah good, you’re back.

Max touches on something that i have been thinking about and struggling with for a long time. Obviously there are the Viv’s and Ric’s and whatever he/she is calling themselves this week who don’t get it and won’t get it and aren’t trying to. It is going to take something monumental for many of them to shift. We can’t waste too much of our time on them. But for all those who genuinely love this country and are really honestly wanting to see positive change and really treading water in terms of having any idea of what to do, this is where the conversation needs to continue.

Max said it better than i can:

Too many whites moan about the deterioration of service delivery and about corruption without acknowledging that their quality of life today is higher than two decades ago and that much of the country is still functioning very well. Too many are so caught up in their arrogant cocoons to see that the only real poverty and suffering are among the black majority. Sensitive issues such as affirmative action, black economic empowerment, crime and farm attacks are abused as sjamboks wielded indiscriminately and with great anger.

Just under the surface, is the feeling I mostly get, lies the feeling that “black” equals “incompetent”.

Too many voices from the black community simply focus on white privilege with little attention being paid to how the governments since 1994 have failed to bring about a more just society. Too few articulate what they think should be done to create a society where most citizens feel happy and acknowledged.

It is too simplistic to simply blame the white community in 2015 of perpetuating black poverty after 1994.

The point is that there IS truth in both statements. We get what a lot of the problem is and we need to be more open and free in acknowledging where from our side [and the colour we unwittingly represent] there is a problem. And that the problem we see in the other side is not the only problem, that if solved, would suddenly miraculously turn things around.

It is a both/and scenario and i think people on either side [again, the whole Us vs. Them rearing its ugly head] need to really be able to own up to their proverbial poo.

‘Let go of the anger’ is the cry. And this interesting article written by Antjie Krog, author of ‘Begging to be Black’ that i recently read, gives perhaps some picture of how this can take place.

The anger that we need to let go of, the grievances that we have [which often are completely legitimate as Max mentions above] can forever mist up our eyes and paralyse our actions if we don’t move beyond them.

One place i have observed this has been in conversations with some of my black friends who live in the townships who have no doubt that land restitution is of the highest order, but seem to have little practical idea of how this might be brought about. Which becomes a little frustrating. Even when giving them a carte blanche scenario where they have all the power for a day or a month or whatever it is to bring about the change in relation to land restitution, there doesn’t seem to be a plan as to how it could actually happen.

Is there possibly a way to not let go of the ideal that is land reparation [and continue to meet and wrestle and figure out how we can turn that idea into a practical solution in the best possible way] but get started on some more manageable directly achievable movements?

Is there a way where we step back from complaints about service delivery and corruption [not saying either of those are okay, but just move those issues to the side] and focus on the quality of life we have and question whether there might be any changes we could make now that might be helpful. One example might be if we have someone who cleans our house or looks after our children, to look at what we pay them and assess if it is minimum wage or a living wage?

Can we accept that the government is not pulling its weight in a way that benefits all its citizens, but instead of having that as our main banner call, perhaps shift our view to provincial or even more local forms of government and start lobbying for necessary changes there?

It is time for us to move away from purely ideological and hypothetical and wishful thinking arguments and conversations and get our hands more dirty with the practical solutions that are around us. What might some of those solutions be? Please feel free to share some ideas in the comments section.

[For this post, don’t even waste your time with disparaging racial comments – anything that is not a direct response to this post or a possible solution idea will be instantly deleted]

With great white power comes great fragility.

Why do white people tend to freak out when the conversation moves to being about race?

i just read an excellent interview article online that spoke into some of the things i have been thinking and observing and while it is worth reading the whole thing, there are two aspects i wanted to dive into. Robin DiAngelo [who is being interviewed and is white and runs workshops on anti-racism and has been for more than twenty years] introduces the term ‘White Fragility’ as something she has noticed again and again. One reason she gives for this is the idea we tend to have that ‘Only bad or racist people can be racist’ as opposed to the possibility that a good person can still have some racism in them. It’s not the black and white [ha!] of Complete Racist or No Racism Whatsoever. As a white person, the likelihood is that i am racist in some way or ways [i see it in myself and it’s horrible and needs to be tackled every time] but the question is ‘To What Extent?’

For white people, their identities rest on the idea of racism as about good or bad people, about moral or immoral singular acts, and if we’re good, moral people we can’t be racist – we don’t engage in those acts. This is one of the most effective adaptations of racism over time—that we can think of racism as only something that individuals either are or are not “doing.”

In large part, white fragility—the defensiveness, the fear of conflict—is rooted in this good/bad binary. If you call someone out, they think to themselves, “What you just said was that I am a bad person, and that is intolerable to me.” It’s a deep challenge to the core of our identity as good, moral people. [Robin DiAngelo, professor of multicultural education at Westfield State University and author of What Does it Mean to Be White? Developing White Racial Literacy]

Many white people tend to be a little iffy around race conversation in general, but it tends to be when you bring up the term ‘White Privilege’ that so many of them suddenly get a little “shaky”. i believe that for the most part it’s not understanding what many of us are talking about when we talk about ‘White Privilege’ that causes some of the issue. i think the term has become one of those overused ones that for many people is instant red cloth waved to a bull. If we managed to get some of the people who react so strongly around a dinner table and explain what we are talking about when we talk ‘white privilege’ i believe that for the most part people would be nodding their heads, going, “Oh, well yeah of course.”

White fragility also comes from a deep sense of entitlement. Think about it like this: from the time I opened my eyes, I have been told that as a white person, I am superior to people of color. There’s never been a space in which I have not been receiving that message. From what hospital I was allowed to be born in, to how my mother was treated by the staff, to who owned the hospital, to who cleaned the rooms and took out the garbage. We are born into a racial hierarchy, and every interaction with media and culture confirms it—our sense that, at a fundamental level, we are superior.

And, the thing is, it feels good. Even though it contradicts our most basic principles and values. So we know it, but we can never admit it. It creates this kind of dangerous internal stew that gets enacted externally in our interactions with people of color, and is crazy-making for people of color. We have set the world up to preserve that internal sense of superiority and also resist challenges to it. All while denying that anything is going on and insisting that race is meaningless to us. [Robin DiAngelo]

Wow. DiAngelo nails it on the head. i would love to participate in one of her race workshops.

One thing that helps me think i might be right on the whole direction of where these race conversations have been going on my blog and on Facebook and beyond is the posture. The kinds of people that are saying the same kind of things i am saying or engaging positively in those conversations tend to come with a sense of question, of listening, of being open to learn, of saying things like, ‘Well i don’t know what the answers are but i know we have to do things differently’, of being open to being wrong or needing to change within themselves, of moving away from comfort if necessary, of the possibilities of sacrifice. And more.

Whereas, typically, those people who are arguing against what we are saying and the process are judgemental and accusatory, they say it how it is [as opposed to asking questions, listening, being open to see wrong in themselves], they make personal attacks, they leave ultimatums [“i dare you to post this comment else it proves you’re a liberal doos” or whatever], use Us vs. Them language [“those people”, “the blacks”…], ridicule, talk about how they earned their money and deserve to spend it on themselves, and speak quite negatively about where the country is headed.

If someone disagrees strongly with me and i can see they’ve taken time to listen and hear what i am saying and have formulated an argument based on facts, or sensible ideas, or reasoning, and if they treat me with respect despite strong disagreemnet, and if they argue the issue as opposed to making it personal whether it be about me or other people, then i am far more likely to engage with them further and see if maybe i have something to learn from them even if i disagree with them. And that is what i hope to see more of on here – strong disagreements, back and forth wrestling, passionate arguments on both sides of the conversation – but done with respect, empathy, love, appreciation of the other person’s story and more.

If only we weren’t all so fragile, maybe we could see these conversations move forwards…

[For the rest of the article ‘Why White People Freak out when they’re Called Out About Race, click here]

[To see some of the posts we put together on ‘White Privilege’ click here]

Begging to be Black: Bonus Part – The Power of Forgiveness

So i know i said i would share three sections of the book ‘Begging to be Black’ by Antjie Krog that i have just finished, but i couldn’t not share this bonus piece [which EVERYONE should read, regardless of where you are from] and then you really should get hold of the book, because four short extracts do not do it justice… but this is powerful stuff, prepare yourself…

This is from a trip Antjie did to Turkey and more particularly, Istanbul:

‘We walk down the street toward a recommended place called Güllüoğlu, established many years ago and still using a recipe for baklava, so we are told, brought from Damascus.4

‘Why does it sound so wonderful, a recipe from Damascus?’ I ask.4’The place of revelation, scales falling from Saul’s eyes,’ suggests the professor, as we pass a large demonstration taking place under massive police presence.

‘It is such a relief that my country has said sorry,’ he says. ‘At last the discussions about reparation have begun.’

‘It somehow seems to me that it is easier to say sorry when you are in power and in the majority. It is very confusing with us. Instead of whites being asked to pay back, they were asked to step back. Instead of being taxed, they’re being blamed.’

The baklva is indeed an experience worth a thesis. Three small wedges arrive on a plate. After the first mouthful we fall into sublime silence – no talking, no academic thinking, only deep, intense, empirical abandon. Our tongues verify the menu: the syrup of Turkish baklava is made not from honey but from special sugar; the pistachios super-finely grated on top were handpicked in Barak; the butter in the pastry comes from Şanlıurfa. It is sheep’s milk butter ‘made clear’ in the heat of the sun.

We sit enraptured. Speechless we drink the Turkish coffee. The money we hand over seems immaterial. The professor goes to a bookshop and I rush back for my panel discussion with a Turkish journalist and a Greek journalist who uncovered mass graves and atrocities on Cyprus. Their governments don’t like this debunking of ‘official explanations’, ad the two journalists are being harassed in terrible ways. Both of them look anxious and stressed out.

My input starts with a quote from Cynthia Ngewu, one of the mothers of the Gugulethu Seven, which I used in my book about the Truth Commission:

This thing called reconciliation… if I am understanding it correctly… if it means this perpetrator, this man who killed [my son] Christopher Piet, if it means he becomes human again, this man, so that I, so that all of us, get our humanity back… then I agree, then I support it all.

‘Let me set out what this amazing formulation says: it says that Mrs Ngewu understood that the killer of her child could, and did, kill, because he had lost his humanity; he was no longer human. Second, she understood that to forgive him would open up the possibility for him to regain his humanity, to change profoundly. Third, she understood also that the loss of her son affected her own humanity; her humanity had been impaired. Fourth and most important, she understood that if indeed the perpetrator felt driven by her forgiveness to regain his humanity, then it would open up the possibility of the restoration of her own full humanity.

‘In the TRC final report, Mrs Ngewu’s response on prison sentences for the perpetrators reads as follows: “I think that all South Africans should be committedto the idea of re-accepting these people back into the community. We do not want to return the evil that the perpetrators committed to the nation. We want to demonstrate a humanness [ubuntu] towards them, so that [it] in turn may restore their own humanity.”

‘This was being said at the end of a century dominated by revenge: that to punish would be to perpetuate inhumanity. Analysing the sentences in TRC testimonies about forgiveness, one picks up how both literate and illiterate black people formulated forgiveness in terms of this interconnected humaneness.

‘What I am trying to say is that Christianity (or human rights, restorative justice, or, for that matter, the theology of Tutu and the politics of Mandela) is not simply linked to, or an add-on to, a kind of African interconnectedness, but is in fact imbedded therein.

Interconnectedness forms the interpretive foundation of southern African Christianity, and it is this foundation that enabled people to reinterpret tired and troubled Western concepts such as forgiveness, reconciliation, amnesty and justice in new and usable ways.

‘In other words: these concepts moved across cultural borders and were infused and energised by a world view of interconnectedness-towards-wholeness to assist people to break out of their past and make a new future possible.

‘So what would be the difference? Christian forgiveness says: I forgive you because Jesus has forgiven me. The reward will be in heaven. “African” forgiveness says: I forgive you so that you can change and I can begin to heal and all of us can become the selves that we were meant to be. The reward is here on earth.

‘Forgiving is therefore never separate from reconciliation, but the first personal step. It demands a response from the forgiven one, to change, to become human, to share. Forgiveness is thus not an uninformed embrace of evil, it is not a miracle brought about by an individual, but an interconnected act that makes a changed relationship possible, a future, a new way of being.’

But I see the audience sitting in front of me: a fierce gleam of hurt, anger and bitterness in their eyes. The world will never learn anything from Africa, my friend Sandile Dikeni once said. We are just something cute, a mask to hang in a television lounge, but we will never be recognised for having contributed something worthwhile to the world.

[To return to the beginning of this series and read some other powerful extracts from this book, click here]

Begging to be Black: part incoherence

A third share from Antjie Krog’s brilliant ‘Begging to be Black’ [did you order your copy yet?] with a very different flavour from the last two i shared as this is more a reflection on the country than herself. Found in chapter 9:

Writing while busy with her time in Berlin, Antjie says, ‘I experience, fr the first time until now, coherence. For example, on my way to the woods, I walk along Furtwängler Strasse. I know who Furtwängler is. At home I have a CD on which he conducts the Berlin Philharmonic performing a Brahms symphony. During my stay here, Furtwängler was the theme of a cultural programme on rbb Kulturradio one morning, part of a newspaper article a month later, part of a museum exhibition about the choices of musicians during the Second World War, part of German history taught and written about, available as a biography in a book or CD or DVD in the bookshops, part of a documentary on late-night television, part of a street address on someone’s business card, and part of a conversation about the bus stops along the route of the M29. Furtwängler, an extraordinary musician, is woven into the fabric of the culture that intersects daily in many different ways with the lives of ordinary people in the streets ad shops; there is coherence between the life in your head and the physical life around you.

The coherence in Germany also extends to the shop windows in Kurfürstendamm. One week they display clothes and shoes for workers at hospitals, roads, construction sites, factories and cleaning sites. The following week they display dresses from the Prussian period for Christmas, then soccer gear in German colours, then artworks built on Greek and Roman mythology.

In South Africa, we all live in incoherency. It looks like this: the area I live in has a name only some people can pronounce [be it Oranjezicht or Qunu], its meaning lost to most of us. Many provinces, areas, towns and streets had other names prior to their current ones, so one will find some people still using the previous name, others the one before that. Some use the correct pronunciation, others a new anglicised version of the correct pronunciation. (Some of the taxi drivers talk of Orange-Cyst.) Apart from Mandela and Verwoerd, we do not really know the people who appear as statues on pedestals, or the people honoured by naming or vilified by renaming. No part of our history is without its exclusion and destruction of some part of the population.

Every day, most South Africans jump with stretched-out legs from one solid knowable stone, hoping to land on another – but they are mostly out of reach. If one misses, one wades in an unknown morass until one reaches something recognisable to stand on for a while and catch ones’s breath. I always think of Gloria Gotyombe: when she comes once a week to clean the house, she must ask herself: What on earth could this white woman be doing on a computer that is so important that she and her husband can generate enough money to pay for a house and a car and clothes and the abundance of food in the fridge?

Worker’s clothes would never be displayed in our shop windows, because work was racified and is therefore despised. Nobody wants to be a worker. We all want jobs, but not work. The clothes on display are suits for the bosses. Actually, we all want to be bosses, non-working bosses.

Most of the organised events in South Africa exclude, either through place or form, theme or reference, framework or cost. On our national holidays (Heritage Day, Reconciliation Day, Youth Day) we realise we have nothing in common – not what we read, not what we speak, not what we write, not what we sing, not whom we honour.

Nothing binds us. Our daily Third World lives are broken into hundreds of shards of unrooted, incoherent experiences. (Visiting Jakarta with a group of Dutch and Flemish writers, one of them remarked how they navigate with difficulty through the streets checking for ‘undesirabilities’ – unequal surfaces, unexpected holes, open sewers, pedestrians, bicycles, etc. – while I seem to walk the streets with a different sensibility, as if I know the geography beforehand.)

Of course incoherence is not new to southern Africa: centuries ago the First Peoples found their way of life splintered by black groups moving south, and after all the indigenous groups were violently invaded by white settlers. But the thing about colonialism is that the colonisers often manage to produce their own coherency, so the world in which I have grown up was a completely closed coherent world in which the first time I came across a black man with a university degree was when I was twenty-two years old. For half my life I functioned entirely in Afrikaans, from bathing my children to writing a complicated dissertation. The new South Africa changed that. Afrikaners found their way of life forcefully splintered by a gradually self-asserting black majority, and the majority of Afrikaans-speakers turned out not to be white and started claiming the majority space in their language. So Afrikaners, who have so easily appropriated the land and the continent, found themselves in a new kind of post-colonial dynamic and are still reeling and deeply resentful about the incoherence in their lives.’

= = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = =

She goes on to this point which is different, but equally between-the-eyes:

‘J. [her husband] has arrived. He brought into the flat our stressed-out lives from South Africa. I shifted to my ‘official’ side of the bed, made space in the cupboard, learnt to adjust the shower and asked for a television.

We saw our president-to-be dancing in skins, takkies and sunglasses at his wedding. Then, picking up his legs as I’ve seen younger men do, he falls backwards on the people behind him. The BBC played it at least five times during the day and every time I felt the embarrassment spreading in my neck. The worst, however, was the wife-to-be: she sat in her traditional clothes plus white bra with a submissive demureness that is quite frightening. And one thinks of the impressive presences of our recent first ladies. J. tells of power failures called by the misnomer ‘load-shedding’. He says he is going to vote for the political party that is not dancing. Watching BBC or CNN, it seems the only business in Africa is dancing, dressing, ad, it has to be said, dying.

Coming down Hasensprung on Saturday, there is was: snow.

Real, big, soft flakes of snow. I put down my bags and just stood there, feeling it on my face, my heart wanting to burst. I learnt that snow has a smell, and that at night it glows into the flat as if a big, cold moon is hanging outside.

When I passedthe Hasensprung on Sunday, the pavement had been scraped clean. I was aghast. Someone had actually cleaned Hasensprung on a Saturday-fucking-afternoon! Can that be? On Monday morning, something crunched under my shoes. Gravel! I was almost moved to tears: to think that somebody cared enough that others might slip there? It’s beyond my understanding, coming from a place where we kill each other for twenty rand.’

[For the last extract – a super powerful bonus piece on Forgiveness, click here]

[For a range of other interesting South African related posts, click here]

Begging to be Black: part non-racialism

This is the second of three posts i am wanting to share from Antjie Krog’s ‘Begging to be Black’ worth some serious thought and conversational engagement.

From Chapter 9:

‘I don’t think I know how to talk about social imaginings. I think I am experiencing a racial awareness crisis. Whereas I can imagine myself poor, ill, scared, beautiful, strange, powerful, I can’t even begin to imagine myself black. Why is that? One stood up against apartheid because one believed that all people shared a common humanity and that discrimination was wrong. In other words, I think I can imagine the indignity and hurt and empathise with that, but I can’t imagine the being-blackness.’

‘Do you know or suspect why that may be the case?’

‘Part of me is terrified that it is an indication that, somewhere, somehow, the residues of as yet unrecognised reflexes of racism are still smouldering. That I cannot imagine myself black because I actually despise black.’

‘You suggest that to imagine yourself black would be for you the final proof of your non-racialism?’

‘Maybe. But maybe I simply don’t know enough about being black to imagine it. Again the story of Petrus. I think I do not hear it properly enough to say: now I can imagine myself with a black voice. On the other hand, maybe whiteness is unlaydownable and I just have to learn to care for it?’

‘I really feel a bit uncomfortable with your black/white divisions. You suggest that blackness is more than skin-deep, to use the cliche, and this is essentialist talk. Trying to argue intelligently about it is a waste of time for me. We’re sitting here in a country [Germany] and in an institution and with people that are still staggering to make up for those very consequences of racist essentialism.’

‘Okay. You’re right. You’re right.’

‘And this is not to deny that a group of people’s inner psyche had been overwhelmingly formed through the colonial and apartheid principle of race. But race deserves more serious thinking than skin colour.’

‘We still have twenty minutes.’

‘No, let us continue next week. I also have to point out that you should be careful not to let blackness become a voiceless group that you privately observe and define, instead of a varied, multiple people with which you should have multiple-way conversations. In other words, don’t keep on talking to whites about blacks. Talk and listen to blacks.’

Somewhat unsettled by this stern admonition, I walked back to the flat.

Oblivious to the trees and the long, quiet street, my inside was searching for a word. A milk-near word. Something rising through all the remnants of past hearings. How was one to break through all these dividing borders? ‘Suture,’ I think. Perhaps ‘suture’ is the word that can wash this world. Carefully, to stitch, to weave, this side to that side, so that border becomes a heart-hammered seam.’

[To read the next part on Coherence or the lack thereof, click here]