the day i took on city hall…

and by ‘took on’ i mean ‘visited and got to speak’ – have written a two parter blog about today’s public response to mayor nutter’s ban on public feeding on my other blog and here are the links…

http://thesimpleweigh.wordpress.com/2012/04/12/i-had-a-dream-part-i

http://thesimpleweigh.wordpress.com/2012/04/12/i-had-a-dream-part-ii-blooper-reel

and now ‘got stalked by’ http://thesimpleweigh.wordpress.com/2012/04/13/i-had-a-dream-part-iii-aka-stalker-in-the-gym/

and quoted… http://thesimpleweigh.wordpress.com/2012/04/14/i-had-a-dream-part-iv-aka-pressing-on/

does it count if the person you’re stalking is you?

last nite i was sitting chatting to my friend and hardcore gym buddy Coe at Mad Mex where we were hanging out celebrating Erica whose residency has reached an end and i suddenly had this surreal moment of watching myself/listening to myself speak.

the main topic of our conversation started with ‘Hunger Games’ which we both had watched this week and had different reactions to or feelings about, but then extended to the topic of ‘movies i have walked out of’ vs ‘why i will never walk out of a movie’ and a few things beyond that.

we have quite dramatically different [some would say ‘opposing’] views on the topic of conversation and yet at no point did the discussion get heated or did i call him an idiot [or even secretly think it] – what i did say was that i held value in the fact that Coe had a different view on something to me based on thought that he had put into it as opposed to complete lack of thought and just going along with what a lot of other people do/think. And that for me was incredible. I didn’t need to have him ‘come over to my side’ or end the discussion agreeing with me [he didn’t, but i hope and believe he saw and understood my points and point of view and wasn’t secretly calling me ‘idiot’ inside his head altho knowing Coe as i do, he would have almost definitely not kept it inside his head if he had thort so] and yet it was refreshing to discuss and hear a radically different opinion and way of doing things and also be able to understand the merit of his point of view.

at one point i said a lot of this stuff to him and how ‘twenty-years-ago Brett’ or even maybe ‘ten-years-ago Brett’ would more than likely not have displayed the same kind of maturity in conversation or probly even in thort as ‘present-day Brett’ had going on. and it was a moment of hey-maybe-i-do-actually-grow-or-change-from-time-to-time… which was a good feeling to have.

the other thing which i said to Coe which i think is important is that those other two Brett’s were probably not that much different in passion or belief or understanding – the way i addressed things then, the conversations i had, the letters i wrote, were all done with the same or similar kind of motivation and belief, but probably, at times, with less good execution or action. so i hold my belief from the conversation i had with Coe very passionately and for me i still see it as the truth i currently hold to [or what i believe as best as i can to be truth] while at the same time am able to hold that in tension alongside seeing and understanding why Coe holds his belief very passionately as the truth he currently holds to. and the possibility that we could in some way both be right. or both be wrong. or maybe more likely both be partially right and partially wrong. who knows? the conversation was part of a wrestle for truth which more people could do more of. we settle too quickly for ‘i’m right, everyone who thinks differently is wrong’ and not enough of ‘how can i learn from what you think and experience and believe?’

great chat with a good friend and exciting to have that personal moment of watching and listening to myself and the process of the discussion and how it went down, and to smile quietly to myself…

 

noooooo-body expects the royal wedding inquisition…

so yesterday was one of those fun days when i posted what i thort was a random thort on some global happening and turns out it wasn’t…

not that i am new to this or very much surprised – from not joining the save the orangutang group on facebook which eventually [after much patient messaging and reasoning and trying to be nice] scored Justine from Australia the prize of being the first person i had to block on Facebook [she was seriously stalking me and commenting on every single thing i did on how i had time to change my status but not to save the orangutangs] to wondering if Rob Bell maybe had a point with some of his questions [altho to be honest, this debate just got long and dreary, I can’t remember being personally attacked for it] to not making a big push to save the World of Birds [because christians apparently hate animals and proved it once again] to promoting two township cyclists riding the Epic [because it’s such an expensive race, can’t they ride the Argus and what about the bird people?] to writing about moving to the Simple Way in Philadelphia [cos we have poor people here, how dare you help poor people there] i have been bombarded by a group of people [different every time strangely enough] who have taken up the cause of telling me what a terrible person i am and what i can or can not write on my blog.

yesterday it turned out that i have to love the royal wedding [because one day somehow those two people who got married are going to be my king and queen and will i respect them then? – wrote the south african boy from stellenbosch, south africa] but it is okay if i don’t love sport [cos it’s boring and stupid and real friends do outdoor things]

all of these things remind me of one of my favourite monty python skits from the flying circus series [flip, am i allowed to love british comedy?] which is where a person played by graham chapman walks into the room and announces “there’s trouble at the mill” – when his posh ladyfriend asks him a bunch of questions he eventually gets flustered and says “i was just told to come in here and say there’s trouble at the mill. i didn’t expect a kind of spanish inquisition” – the doors burst open, there is a musical fanfare and three red cardinals come in announcing “Noooooooo-body expects the spanish inquisition. our weapon is fear, that’s all fear and surprise. our TWO weapons are fear, surprise and a ruthless efficiency to the pope, our THREE…” and so on until he changes it to, “Amongst our weaponry are such diverse elements as…” – ah you should just go and watch it here.

so some of what i have learned from these various blogs is the following:

[1] you have to like what i like and so much so that you must support it and if you don’t like it then keep it to yourself and don’t you dare mention that you don’t like it – that will somehow lead to what i like being irreparably damaged forever somehow

[2] if i disagree with what your blog is about i will tell you so, many times, and rush as quickly as i can to making it a personal attack on you, what you like, who you spend time with and what you spend time doing, or don’t

[3] when you write about positive things like creating better relationships or making a difference to the poor i will be very, very quiet because it is a lot harder for me to rant on those things and i prefer the easy targets

[4] some people, like Caryn and Brits, come around and we move to a place of being able to interact quite positively and be mutual encouragers which is why i always will try to take the time to reason and explain and love and try and be patient and engage…

and [5] my friends rock! as someone who likes to believe that i don’t get affected much by what people say and think about me [which is true to a huge extent] i do realise that at the end of another long day of slogging it out with people i don’t know, that a kind comment from Cara or my extended family members or Kleinfrans or Sammi and a bunch of other people who i know and love [or a nice defence/take on by my beautiful wife Val] let’s me realise that actually a barrage does tend to wear one down – so thank you friends and family for your comments when they have come, cos they have brought life and encouragement and strength and helped me to carry on.

and to close off with words from another amazing scene, “Listen, don’t mention the war! I mentioned it once, but I think I got away with it all right.” [Basil Fawlty, Fawlty Towers, The Germans]

it’s not stalking unless you’re planning to kill someone

so i was at the beach yesterday which i really don’t do enough and was actually in the water (ditto) which was amazingly warm (or maybe amazingly warm for cape town beach water – i am not really a swimmer type person usually because i find the water too cold but here i had to be in to watch the kids and it was surprisingly not that bad) and i started to watch people

i love watching people – not in a hunt-them-down-later-and-leave-disturbing-messages-made-out-of-letters-cut-out-of-magazines-and-the-newspaper kind of way – but just seeing how people (who don’t know they’re being watched) behave or look or speak

and it was great. firstly there were these three young and little girls who were having an absolute blast in the waves near us and just seemed absolutely content and happy and vibing with each other and laughing a lot.

then there was a very young and little dude who was trying to catch a wave on his surfboard and just wasn’t able to stand and as he went past me i said to him “so close dude” and he responded “yeah and so far” and i gave him a bit of a Robin-Williams-in-Dead-Poets-Society-and-Good-Morning-Vietnam-type pep speech about how he could make it and how he shouldn’t give up and so on and he went off and the very next wave… he tried to stand up… and didn’t… but i think he didn’t stand up a LOT better than before I’d given him the talk…

watching him a little bit more and first picked up his mom in a full wet suite surfing near him and helping take him out over the waves to get to a good spot to try again, and then his dad also full wet suit, also surfing and i thort, “wow, that is so super uber cool” cos you know what they say, ‘the family who surfs together… um… something something together’ or something like that, but it was great to see this family, obviously loving each other and loving hanging out together doing stuff

then there were these two guys walking along the beach together, obviously friends. the one guy had no neck whatsoever, you know, one of those head-almost-directly-on-the-shoulders type guys, and as i noticed that i looked across at his friend and noticed that he had almost too much neck, and so it was quite an interesting combination of neck and no-neck walking down the beach together – how about sharing some with your friend, neck!

and then there was thug body boarder. now i know you can’t call someone ‘thug’ not in a bad way but i really don’t mean it in a bad way. if this guy was in a british football movie he would be in the credits as ‘football hooligan #4’ or something like that – just looked like a bit of a bruiser, big oke, well built, huge tattoo down his forearm and kinda thuggish… which is relevant, cos if i just said a big guy on a body board then it loses momentum. cos i watched him catch a wave and ride it for a long while and he had the biggest most contentable smile on his face, the kind of smile that only an 8 year old can have when he eyes ice-cream or the parents of a toddler when he finally poos in the pottie you know. It was incredible – this dude was absolutely enjoying himself to the extreme

and obviously a bunch of other people but those stood out. and of course the ten kids we had brought to the beach from kayamandi (the K) who were having an absolutable blast. brilliant just watching these kids come to life and just completely thrive in the water.

i love watching people. guessing who they are and what they’re about. watching interaction between people who really care about each other (and there are a lot of those on the beach – maybe those who don’t care enough stay away from the beach a lot more) and just seeing the absolute power of love in action.

Save the. Plan it!

so i guess in some small part it was thankx to a stalkery type australian girl that me and tbV started thinking about what we eat and then started No-Meat-Thursdays which has actually been quite a rad extension of our lives and only occasionally interfered with ‘normal’ life – so every Thursday we don’t eat meat just as a small small step in terms of meaning one-day-a-week’s less meat needing to be there i guess and i know a bunch of okes from enGAGE and maybe wider around have joined in as all so maybe soon we will have saved our first cow and can celebrate with a spit braai… okay maybe not.

but the point is that God put us in charge of this planet and gave us dominion over the animals and the fishes and so on and we have largely stuffed it up largely cos of selfishness and greed as is usually the case when we are talking about us and the stuffing-upness of life… so we have not done as we should and it is up to us as Jesus-followers to be involved in that – well it’s up to everyone really, but Jesus-followers have it as part of their mandate and i guess this is an area which is always viewed as separate from the church, often because a number of the people calling it to our attention are a bunch of nut jobs (lets be honest and yes that’s a generalisation but only because it is generally true – not ‘all’ but ‘a number of’ and usually the ones that shout the loudest and are thus more visibly seen).

a second thing me and tbV eventually started doing is recycling. a bit. in that i’m not sure we know exactly how to do it or if we’re doing it right but we have a container outside our back door for glass and one for cardboard and one for cans and one for plastic and we keep stuff separate from general garbage and stick it in there and we finally discovered a place in town (at the BP incidentally) where we can drop it off and did our first drop off the other day (after months of collecting and not knowing where to drop off)

so it’s not much for sure, but it’s something – one day of not meat and a bunch of recycling – it can be a little bit of a mission (going to braais on Thursdays and driving to town with bags of crap) but it is necessary and this is an area where i do think the church needs to get a lot more involved.

starting with you and what are you doing?