momentum

momentum can’t start tomorrow. it already started yesterday...

talent

Talent hits a target no one else can hit; Genius hits a target no one else can see.

- Arthur Schopenhauer

and i guess i can’t really add much to a good point. in fact, sometimes writers run the risk of making a point less by trying to unpack it. for me, the crux of it all lies in the fact that talent means little. talent creates potential. talent does not convert it.

i guess that’s where we come in. either through genius (as this arthur fellow seems to think), or simply through persistence or hard work.

sleep

entertainment asks for more of me.
there is more to watch.
more to click.
my eyes can stay open therefore they do.
lashes meet but diverge again.


creativity is paused.

stillness now deafens me.
peaceful noise.
and i’m left hoping for more
of a good thing
while kissing the bad.

birds and words

why write about the birds?
my words steal from the birds beauty more than they could ever add to it
the birds don’t need words
politicians need words
i need words

dubai

the flight was normal i guess. on board entertainment is so good these days the flight always seems to short. (then again this is only my 3rd long flight ever...)

I can't help noting people... my eyes scan them and wonder what language they speak. I hear two girls speaking Afrikaans to each other on the plane (we did leave from Joburg afterall) and as i turn to look at them, with their teased hair and eye-make-up, they needn't speak for me to know where they come from.

I am somewhat disappointed by the commonness of the people around me. Nothing new yet. As we arrive and touch down in Dubai i quickly realise that the sun is rising and i have not slept at all. I blame raymond even though everyone else seems to love him.

As i walk into the dubai international airport, it is all the same. It's the western east. It's the same glitz, the same sheen, the same as what im used to.

I need the toilet soon after i'm off the plain. While inside the restroom I hear a new sound. A strange sound. The call to prayer sounds loudly through the bathroom, and I'm still. I absorb. I become aware that this place has it's own history. It may feel very similar to what i'm used to, but by no means am i part of it. It's outside me and therefore I respect it.

Dubai... Well, im only here for one more hour, let me absorb as much as i can.

total

the moments when i truly live are the moments when i act with my whole will- oswald chambers

grace is more beautiful than justice

justice is strong
his voice firm
his point strong
it's hard to argue
worse
it's not not to agree with him
persuasive. intelligent. correct.
a winning combination
he commands the mind of the intellect
he commands the mind of the peasant
he is the universal language to tell us when something is fair
and when it is not

across the room, her sweet smile captures my eye
she seems sensible
yet sense is not her final sway
more
there's more inside her than i have eyes or soul to see
the unknown
there are elements of her that i will never know
i can see that from just one glimpse
it's grace: justice's only opposition

freedom

freedom is found by few because freedom is found in chains.

noise

there is noise
too much noise
i cannot think
no idea is my own anymore

there was a time when i would think things that others had thought
but due to isolation i would believe the idea was my own
and that brought hope.

now i sit, wondering how many others have thought about noise
why write another blog on the same thing as a zillion other blogs?
why add to the noise?
why be the one to turn the volume up?

i want my life to turn the earth's volume down
i want heaven's quiet song to punctuate my day
but here i am- adding to the noise.

affluency

more than wanting what you don't have is a problem, having what you don't want seems worse...

thoughts on John 7:1-9

"After this, Jesus stayed in Galilee, going from village to village. He wanted to stay out of Judea where the Jewish leaders were plotting his death. But soon it was time for the Festival of Shelters, and Jesus' brothers urged him to go to Judea for the celebration. "Go where your followers can see your miracles!" they scoffed. "You can't become a public figure if you hide like this! If you can do such wonderful things then prove it to the world!" For even his brothers didn't believe in him. Jesus replied, "Now is not the right time for me to go. But you can go anytime, and it will make no difference. The world can't hate you, but it does hate me because I accuse it of sin and evil. You go on. I am not yet ready to go to this festival, because my time has not yet come." So Jesus remained in Galilee."

the opposition of family
it is hard for me to reconcile how the church today has become an institution where the primary focus seems to be on family values. while i agree that the role of the family is critical both within churches and within families in general, i see Jesus regularly overlooking his own family for the sake of the church and for the sake of the Way. There is another passage in Matthew 12:46-50, where Jesus refuses to speak with his own family claiming that anyone who believes in him are his 'mother and brothers'.
i am by no means saying that family values and the relationships we build there are not really that important, but I am perhaps a bit surprised to see that even Jesus did not have 'peachy' relationships with his own brothers. It's almost comforting to see this part of Jesus. God as a human had trouble getting his own brothers to believe in him.
were the brothers too familiar?
were they too jealous to be able to see the miracles he was doing were from above?
what exactly was the problem?
i have no answer, only comfort.

the importance of timing
in the book "the Jesus i never knew" by philip yancey he makes the following point about when Jesus was tempted by Satan in the desert (Luke 4)... the temptations were temptations of urgency:

• stones into bread? ... will you WAIT for your food when you can have it now?

• the adoration and worship of the world? ... will you WAIT for the end of the age when every knee will bow?

• the respect and belief of the religious leaders? ... will you WAIT for that?

it seems that Jesus knew how to wait. it seems to me that waiting was critical to him when it came to pleasing his father.

the number one danger for christians today is to want the right thing too soon because we doesn't even see it as a temptation from Satan. the right thing in the wrong time is perhaps more dangerous than the wrong thing to begin with.

in your time, Jesus. thank you for this journey. everything in my life has brought me to this point and now i wait on you for the things that only you can make clear to me as we go along this path together.

the day facebook replaced my email

so i open up my email application- i get a few mails streaming in... none, if i'm lucky (sorry for the cynicism)

just when i think it is over i become aware that checking your email inbox is still only halfway to being done. flippin facebook. now i have to log on and see what people have got vampire hugs to give me and have to deal with all this likeness rubbish that makes me feel less and less unique everytime i see it.

there it is... "inbox (1)".

my neighbour from when i was 10... "hey! howu?"

what nonsense.

all that for that.

music

she sings and she stops
she shouts but she's not
listening to the notes

she sings ok i guess
but she doesn't move me

one must ride the wings
of the wind that is already there

when you try to create music you fail
when you hear her voice and move with her
you lose yourself in her arms
and that's when people hear her

your talent is just the avenue
people want music not you
and if you move with her
they move with you

learning to pray

so here are a few thoughts on Luke 11:1

“Lord, teach us to pray”

1. Jesus had just been out praying when they asked this question. he could answer them because he knew from experience. he had integrity.
2. The disciples came and asked. they were hungry for it. they must have seen some fruit in Jesus’ life and the way a prayerful life made him operate, made a connection somewhere that it was because of his prayerful life and then they asked if they could have the same.
3. The Lord’s Prayer comes down to:
   - adoration
   - asking
   - wanting to stay pure

Furthermore, Richard Foster, in his book, The Celebration of Discipline comments on this passage by saying the following: The disciples ‘had prayed all their lives but something about the quantity and quality of Jesus’ praying caused them to see how little they knew about prayer.

He goes on to say that learning to pray is a learning process and that we should feel free to grow and learn as we pray. I see my prayer life (when it is in operation) as a wonderful chance to learn how to pray better. It has taken me a long time to see it this way and up until very recently I have always felt under pressure to already know how you should pray and therefore to have an awesome prayer life. I feel released by the fact that I have so much more to learn and that today i can pray as i know how and there is nothing wrong with that.

I'm starting at 10 minutes again. I am free to practice. To lose track of time rather than measuring prayer against the clock.

For the Christian, prayer should make us think of liberty, victory, change and joy. I fear that we see it too much as an obligation. At least that's the way I have seen it for too long now...

Last quote to keep us thinking: "A man prayed and prayed and at first he thought that prayer meant talking. But he became more and more quiet until in the end he realised that prayer is listening." Soren Kierkagaard

meekness

quite recently i heard someone describe meekness the following way:

...when you have the chance to get back at someone who has wronged you but you choose not to.

if that be a correct definition then surely meekness must rank as one of the strongest characteristics a man can possess?

i see a world pretending

obscure eyes
hurried glances
what is in your soul that your window won't show?
what hurt carry you in the hands of today?

yesterday has closed his fist
but today holds a change for you yet
be it true that you may have to wrestle
be it sure that good things don't come easy

i sit here scribbling
criticising them
prisoners of illusion
those confident cowards

they trample through this palace of illusion
artificial light paying homage to their dark
wondering who is looking at them they pretend
if only they knew that we cared naught anyway

sideways glance, you look my way
and there i am caught looking away
what is it within me that can't hold your gaze?
i'm the same. obscure. caught in the haze

my palace of dreams holds the mare of the night
the dark stallion, strong yet easy to fright
we are all as he: afraid of our strength
we write the summary instead of writing at length

in no hurried terms i will now conclude
these thoughts i think that so sway my mood
they feud within me. each has his own voice
but the choice is mine to escape this noise

this conclusion brief but the argument many:
let your light shine- if you have any.

caught in confusion

caught in confusion
this imminent respite that eludes
lost in a form of loss that could actually be gain
lost in the same plight as many before me

and as the numbers battle the words
and as my heart battles the logic
like enemies, my mind and my heart insult one another
there is confusion indeed

captive to the fear of loss
more than i'm free by the benefit of gain
replacement seems more natural than acquisition
but i must ensure that replacement nets more

my heart my greatest asset
maybe there i need insurance
to ensure that peace guides me
to know what needs drive me

wealth not being value
and value being hard to find
i pray that some of it be found
in this heart of mine

my heart and my brain: apparent enemies
perhaps not so. perhaps best friends
challenge, rebuke for the sake of truth
my best interests is where both of them look
and when they agree there is not a dance more beautiful
to see the heart join the mind in the dance of confidence

where have you been, carl?

well for those that didnt know, my apple and cellphone were stolen last week friday. there's such an amazing story behind it all... which i will share one day soon. but i have been using the pen and paper to capture my thoughts lately and now i have a little archive of thoughts which i am hoping to share with you soon. but as for now, i must just say that God truly is greater than my stolen apple... maybe he took away my powerbook to make space on my desk for my macbook? ;) he he... maybe not.

walk

so i cant remember where exactly i heard this but the phase was: "walk into His mercies". I recall thinking that was a cool idea.

The mercy part we must receive. The walk part we must do. It's a wonderful picture to me of the give and take principle that underpins all relationships. Some take more than they give and today that's me, Lord.

Yet today we are a team. You give, I take. I walk, you lead. I step into your mercy even now and make it my life's ambition to live there.

wanting something you can ('t) have

So I guess there is only one thing worse than wanting something you can't have: Wanting something you can have.

Bold comment, I know.

The first and only defense of that statement would be: If you want it and it's attainable then the decision is final. Or is it?

The PROBLEM when something is within your reach is that now there is a decision to make. Without possibility there would be no decision. Now there's the obligation to make a decision. The correct one.

One decision will always be more correct than the other. That's what makes one person better at life than another. He chooses better.

unity

Every Wednesday night at Edenvale Baptist church (my church) the young adults have a little get together that normally comprises a talk and some small group discussion. Last night was my first time going and the evening’s theme was unity. We focussed on Jesus’ prayer for believers in John 17 and then started to discuss issues of unity amongst ourselves.

We chatted about many things but one thought has lingered with me and so I’m going to try and get it down onto paper (well, screen).

The discussion question was the following: “If a person had to come into your church setting and pick up on disunity, what would that reveal?” And so there was the usual string of cliché but fundamental answers: “that we don’t love God enough”, “that we don’t love man enough”… but there was something deep to this question that was clawing gently at my mind. It was a good clawing. One that felt more like a back scratch when the back is itchy… Lame analogy. Apologies.

The thing with people is that we will always have differences. BUT the one thing what unites over and above those differences is when collective man has a common GOAL. When man is striving towards something, differences become unimportant because there is a drive to fulfil the common goal and such differences become less important and even less noticeable.

This is all seeming like common sense and maybe there is nothing profound here but when I started to piece together my thoughts I realised something so simple and yet so cutting: Is the common goal of loving God and loving man important enough among believers to sideline differences? I look around this miserable planet where so often Christians are part of that misery and I wonder what our goal really is… Are we really as selfish as our disunity lets on? Are we really living thinking that loving God is not all that important? Or at least that it is not important enough for us to forget differences, embrace commonalities and get on with it?

and the clock stuck 5:30

i wake up unassisted at what must be 5:15 am... I can feel that it is almost time. My eyes are wide open and my thoughts are surprisingly active. But there's still what must be 15 minutes left. Suddenly every one of those minutes seems worthy to be savoured. I start to think about how ironic it is that i pottered around my flat for 15 minutes before bed without thinking twice. "a minute in the morning counts more surely?" I try to console myself. "Flip, what do i have to get up for again?" the question may warrant a different answer to the one I gave myself before going to sleep. "A lecture?... that's all?" "Can't i just do the lecture here at home... i mean, i do have have a study guide. I will know exactly where to go." But my evening state has already prepped my brain on how convincing my morning state can sound. And he has already told my brain to not listen to him and to just stand up when the alarm goes...

"But the alarm hasn't even gone" declared my morning state so loud and convincing that to argue with it would be futile. It was like the plaintiff delivered some lethal point to the court that made the defense cower. So there I was, at what must have been about 5:20am, with my more logical side being defeated by a ruthless carnal need for sleep.

"Shh, just go back to sleep", whispers my morning mind. I don't have to hear it again. I know that lure. I know that trick, and boy how I love falling for it. No really, I love falling for that one... and so i started falling.... drifting.... I felt like Edmund going back to the witches house for more turkish delight. Suddenly unafraid to disappoint my evening brain I float on the stream back to that place where 8 minutes will feel like a few seconds... . . . .

"BEEP BEEP" "BEEP BEEP"... It's the nokia. He needs to be fed. Oh no. It's trying to tell me something. I look at it's screen.... what is it trying to tell me? What is it saying? Oh my. It is giving me options! What is the word down in the right hand corner that i see? I squint my morning eyes and try my best to read a screen i read nearly every morning of my life. "Snooze" ??! Whoa! What a delightful option that one is. The is no inner dialouge this time. The defense seems to have withdrawn his case. I push it without thinking.

The phone is programmed to snooze for 10 minutes so I am not quite sure what happened this morning. It was way less than 10. In fact I am doubtful of whether or not it even let me snooze for one. Regardless, the time changed from 5:30 to 5:40 in a matter of seconds (Maybe it was God making up for the Gideon sun incident in small doses). So there I was again. 5:40am. I have to be out by 6 otherwise I will sit in traffic for a full hour wasting petrol and becoming late for a lecture that I could be doing by myself at my desk in an hour when it is warmer. FLIP, stop thinking like that, Carl.... it's not helping your education. YES! my defense has a voice... He is in the courtroom! There is still a chance!

With an insane amount of bravery i reach my hand out of the blanket... i feel the cold instantly but i tell my morning voice to speak to my lawyer. I find the switch and it's genesis 1 all over again except this time the light hits my eyes and not adam's (this is me using poetic license) but I'm blown away all the same.

My morning voice tries his last tactic but I know this one too well to be fooled again. "Hey, maybe you can snooze one more time and then you can shower in 1 minute, eat in 2, dress in 2 and be out of here in time." Sounds convincing but i'm not convinced.

I push myself out of bed and start to move. There I go. I win. Well sorta. After all that I am still the winner to one half of myself and the loser to the other half.

And now the clock is striking 7:30 and it is time for my lecture.....

faith

so carl has had the craziest holiday EVER, but im not going to sit telling you about it cos i don't really enjoy doing that. i merely am trying to make the fact that i have not posted something in a while seem forgivable.

From the 7th to the 12th of July I took a team of young guys into Botswana to run a short term mission in a local church there. I was kinda scared leading up to the whole deal because spiritually speaking i was kinda between a rock and a hard place. For weeks I had been at my usual place.... you know that place we all tend to hang about at.... there and there about but nowhere at all.... you know it? maybe it is just me :-) Anyways, i was feeling quite scared because now i was being asked to lead a mission and i felt like having a moses moment: 'Not me, Lord'.

Yet something inside of me just wanted to push into God. To be somewhere spiritually. To push myself out of a rut. So i pushed. And God was faithful. Should I have expected less? HE came to my aid. HE started whispering in my ear again. HE pulled as i pushed and i felt my team mate walking beside me again. Fearless, it was like i became a new man in a few days. And what's weird about it is that i rose to the occasion because i had an occasion to rise to. It couldn't have been much different. The next few days I was going to be in charge of the spiritual dynamic of a team and I needed my A-game. I was not prepared to go minister without it.

And so God was faithful. The build up to the mission was incredible. I remember praying things and knowing that God was going to answer. Knowing that i was asking for what i couldn't achieve, I felt God pleased that my life was requiring faith at last. I was depending. I was needy. And i think God was loving that (I'll clarify that in a while). God blessed our team with incredible divine unity and with a spirit of prayer and boldness. There we were... relative strangers but feeling like we have known one another for months.

I would love to tell you about the whole mission and what happened every day because it was a trip of constant highlights. But I will tell you about my favourite afternoon. We arrived on the Saturday and on the Sunday we had planned to do a few open-airs. This is where we take our sound system to a car park or field and try to get a crowd around us by doing dances and dramas and then share the Word with them and hope that God bring people to know him. Already that is sounding like a rather scary experience hey?! Well anyways, to make matters difficult our sound system broke on the sunday morning. I asked the pastor to try work something out and get us another one but he was unable. hmm, big obstacle this was. But somehow i still felt that we should go for it anyway and the team were all feeling the same. I suggested to the pastor that we try to use the sound system of the shops at the centre. i will never forget his response: 'No, they are all asian people. Very difficult people. They will never let you.'

Well, i had to try something... so i started asking at shop 1 of 5. A flat refusal. Maybe the pastor was right. Shop 2: NO, and a few heated words. Shop 3: A polite lady! who still said NO. Shop 4: Same as 2. Shop 5: I meet this guy called Lee. He's about 50 years old and about 2 feet tall and after rattling off my needs he says 'sure, no problem'. He then walks inside his little shop and plays a CD player which is attached to a 15 inch sub woofer outside his store. Whoa! God pulled through! It felt amazing to be trusting in a God that does pull through. Constantly. Anyway, i'm rambling on a bit so i'm just going to summarise the rest. We did the open air there and souls came to the Lord. We got back into our combi and decided that we weren't done. We wanted more. We felt a little bit cheeky asking God for another sound system. Hadn't already pulled through once? So off we went praying that God would lead and provide. We turned up at a shopping centre place that was having a HUGE social with about 200 people drinking and braaing. The centrepoint of activity was a shebeen called the 'african pot'... By heart skipped a beat when i heard soundwaves coming from the shebeen. But it was a shebeen and we were missionaries. Surely not?! Turns out they had hired a DJ to come and spin some tunes and from what i could gather it seemed that this DJ owned the biggest rig in Botswana. Flip, but this thing was loud. So there I went... the hesitant requester.... to ask if we could do i dance using their system. I got more than i bargained for. He gave me the mic and allowed me to say some stuff about why we do what we do and that we do it for Jesus because we believe he is alive and that it matters. I got to share the gospel! Anyways, we did our dance and stayed there for about an hour and a half speaking with people and having the most amazing conversations. I remember one man saying that this was the first time he had ever seen people bring Jesus to the bar and that he was so grateful because he really needed to hear what we had to say.

So that was God blowing our brains out with his provision and faithfulness. Could only be.

But I had a scary realisation through all this. For the first time in months maybe years of 'christian' living, my life and my day was requiring faith. I was needy. If God didn't lead I would not know where to go. If God did not speak I would not know what to say. And it was abnormal. It felt totally foreign but it felt so good. And then I thought about how I live normally. I do not need faith to get through a single day. I get by fine without it.

And that got me thinking.... the Bible says that without faith it is impossible to please God. Have I just been thinking that God is pleased with my little stupid attempts to be 'christian' when in fact he is not really pleased at all because my life is requiring no faith?

hectic question that we all need to answer. What about today do you need God for? What are you depending on him for? What need can you not meet with your own resources?

We shouldn't have to rise to the occasion when it's a mission trip. Our life should be an occasion that we should have to rise to.

airports

the rush
the hello
the goodbye
the tear
the laugh
the hug
the you've grown
the take off
the land
the coffee as you wait
the hustle
the calm
the airport

I like fat people

Ok, so thinking before you speak is an art that I am still very much in the process of learning. Thinking before I type is a little bit easier. So believe me when I say that I mean every word of this statement: I like fat people.

If I reflect back on the most quality people I have known in the past, the heavier set ones are consistently up there. (I have stopped trying to make this blog sound politically correct- let’s face it, there\s nothing PC about it). Think about your life… Who have made the best friends? Who are the ones that have been gracious and welcoming? It’s the fat ones, isn’t it?

And I think it’s an easy to understand albeit controversial: Some people in this world are at disadvantages purely because of the way that they look. It makes me sick to my core that we live in a society where this is true, but it’s fact. Unfortunately. Things come easier to some people and often the reason they come easier is simply the result of genetics and nothing more.

Then the stark reality leads me down a logical pathway. Genetically disadvantaged people (For the record- I don’t believe that anyone can be genetically disadvantaged as such- asides from disease and disability- but we live in a culture where certain attributes and features are advantageous and others aren’t.) have to work harder on other things to make them attractive to the world. They have to become nice on the inside otherwise they really would have nothing to attract people to them.

I remember once having this friend. Well, half friend. She was by most accounts a social outcast. Looking back I can’t figure out why she was a social outcast except for the fact that she was chubby. She was lovely. She tried so hard with people and there was little reciprocation. I remember keeping her at ‘half friend’ status. I was 12 years old by the way. (Carl reveals his age at this point hoping to gain a little sympathy for his stupid, childish attitude…) Everyone kept her at bay. She was the brunt of many a joke. She was the humorous part of many a conversation. Just ‘cause she was fat.

So she worked harder and became tolerant of rejection. I have no doubt that today she is a marvellous young lady with many things I do not have. I feel sick for being in a crowd that was cruel and possibly caused many of her tears. Gosh, if teasing the skinny kid were the order of the day I would have been the one crying.

And so I’m led to feel the following:
The compensation that society gives people for favourable attributes is perhaps the most yearned for reward hoped for by most people and yet it may well be the most crippling illusion as we chase the acceptance of people.

Book Review- A Short History of Nearly Everything

OK, so here is one of those books that we have all seen on the shelves at exclusive books and wondered about... i can imagine many have read it too.

I started reading it in march and it is now june so it took me a good 3 months to get through it. This is mainly because i kept it as a bedtime book (mistake) and so i made progress at about 2 pages a night. The book requires concentration and an alert mind- all the things i do not have at bed time. Anyways, im going to divide this short review into a couple of good points and a couple of bad about the book 'cos at the end of the review im going to tell you that you should read it anyway... so this way you know whats coming your way.

Positives
1. It is the best common thinkers guide to the development of science that you will find that is understandable and accurate (i presume this of course).
2. It is well written and Mr. Bryson does well to try and make science sound interesting and eve funny at time. This is a grand achievement.
3. The book covers so many interesting subjects... my favourites were the chapters on space, inventions that made scientific progress possible, and a look at the development of man.
4. You dont have to read the whole book. The book is in sectioned format and so it is quite easy for one to isolate only things that interest you and read about them.

Negatives
1. It feels more like a textbook than a normal book 80% of the time. I guess it had to be this way for the book to be factual and accurate but sometimes i found it a bit much. I would have preferred a less factual read with more stories cos then i would have maybe remembered what i have just read. As it stands now, i remember very little.
2. Some chapters are just plain boring. I guess it comes down to personal preference but i must say that at times i was just simply bored. I tried to remain interested but sometimes it just wasn't happening. I blame the book.
3. It provides a historical account for the development of man but suggests no theories to go along with the facts. Facts alone are so empty partly because there are so many of them and so many possible angles to look at it.. I was left with a lot of knowledge and even though i wanted this knowledge to show me something, it was never going to. And so now im blaming the book for now being textbookish enough. The book suggested no framework for coherent thinking once we know the facts. and i sort of wanted something like that.

I guess it is hard to have done what Bill Bryson has done... At the end of the read I am more knowledgeable and my perspectives have become more in tune with irrefutable reality and for that reason i think all people should read it. Just not at bed time.

not my quote

"the atheist is to be pitied more than all men because he has no-one to thank"

the second thing that economists do

and so here it is... i did not forget. and seeing as im exactly half way through my degree now, i have hopefully picked up some points of value along the way!

to recap, the first thing economists do is that they analyse relationships ceteris parabus. if you want to know more about that, take a read of a previous post: ''the first thing economists do"...

The second thing
Moving on to more urgent matters, the second thing that economists do is to analyse situations in two different time frames: short run and long run. Short run analysis allows the economist to evaluate shifts and changes in economic conditions and their immidiate impact on the state of the economy. This is useful as in the short run things don't change much and so you can evaluate them easier.

BUT then there is the LONG RUN... and that's what im so taken with. I'm not going to be too long in trying to explain this- so you either get this or you don't, but try and picture the following...
One of the goals of economic policy is to keep a balance of payments account that is reasonable. The balance of payments account, for the purposes of this analysis, can be described as the amount of rands flowing into SA as a result of exports minus the amount of rands being spent abroad in order to purchase all those cheap CD players and other electronic rubbish from China, Taiwan and Japan. (and other imports too).... In SA, this account is constantly in deficit because we import more than we export. Isn't it nice to be living in a 3rd world country? Anyways, there is a problem when the economy of a country starts to do well because then people start to earn more and then they start to want to consume more which means that the demand for imports increases, which means that imports increase and resultantly the balance of payments account goes into further deficit. oh dear. Therefore, in the SHORT TERM we sit with a deficit which means that something needs to be done... like government could increase taxes in order to reduce people's disposable incomes and then imports would decline etc....

BUT! and this is where the budding economist in me starts to get excited... in the LONG RUN, something else happens... the economy ADAPTS. Think about the following logically... it's not rocket science (i know this cos im not a rocket scientist)...
1. When people's income is up there is an oversupply of money in the economy. This causes interest rates to go up which in turn causes overall spending to decline. When spending declines we have LESS IMPORTS> therefore BoP (Balance of Payments) deficit reduces.
2. When we import lots of junk then there is an oversupply of Rands in the global economy. When supply is up then demand is down (a building block of economic theory) and this means that the price of rands goes down. This means that the cost of foreign goods increases for south africans and therefore LESS IMPORTS> therefore the deficit reduces even more!
BEAUTIFUL STUFF... long run analysis is great because i realise that over and over there seems to be balance... there seems to be adjustment... continuously. This is not true in some instances of course but i find the amount of times it does occur to be uncanny.

And it get me thinking you know. Long run = adjustment. I start to think about life in general and the need for adjustment. Take a divorce for example. In the short run it sucks. It's hopeless. There is despair. There is hurt. And no one can see the light at the end of the tunnel. But then it works out. People adjust. They are forced to. I have recently broken up with my girlfriend of 2 years... i don't know if i will ever know another girl quite like her. I want her. I cant have her now. It's tough. She's in my mind, dreams etc.... And so what must i do? What other option is there? I adjust.... Life without her still works.

Then my brain takes another tangent and i think about evolution and darwin's theory on natural selection. The fittest survive. The weak one perishes and the LONG run favours those who learn how to survive in challenging conditions and those that adapt.

In fact the long run speaks of little else besides adaptation.

And that is what they do, these economists. Clever bunch they are.

Book Review- For One More Day

Well, this is one of those books that requires an imagination from page one. The author, Mitch Albom, seems to assume a lot of poetic license. I don't know if you are allowed to write in the 4th person but this guy does... to know what I'm talking about you kinda got to read the book. Anyways, i dont want to write a long review, but only to say that this read was easy (i read it in about 3 hours) and at times very emotive. It is a story about a guy who at the end of hope and angry in life and he gets to spend one day with his deceased mother (you feeling the new age vibies?? he he) The day is a day that changes him completely and opens his eyes to the reality that gnaws away the constructs of his perceptions of his parents..

There were times when I was captivated my the authors imagery and the way he presented ideas and at other times found him rather uninspiring. But on the whole it is a book that i would recommend to most people. To anyone that has battled with a relationship with their mother then this is a must-read i reckon. It opens the eyes of children to the heart of a mother.

And that's all i got to say about that really.

the trip

so at the moment i am in drakensbburg... right in the middle (where the peaks are the grandest) and i have had a fantastic past few hours. let me tell you a little bit about how it began:

yesterday 12 noon:
i go past the bottle store and pick up some red wine. i am a novice at this but there are people around me so i pretend to know what i'm looking for- truth be told, i don't even know where the wine section is! i finally find it and being all too aware of the people around me, i pick up 2 bottles and pretend to compare them. the outcome of my purchase had already been decided on price but i had to look like i was choosing my wine based upon the fact that it was 'vintage' or that it was 'born of sun, air, rain, and rich african soils.' what rubbish! so that was purchased and i popped my wine into the boot of my fully-tanked, clean and reliable silver dragon (otherwise known as my 1992 VW jetta) and hit the road.

yesterday 1pm:
it has been an hour on the road and i am starting to panic. it looks like i have either underestimated the distance of the trip or the pace of the silver dragon. the latter seems like a betrayal so i resolve on the fact that the distance over time equation is not in my favour. i will miss the first half of the rugby for sure.

yesterday 2:30pm:
i am still 150ok away from my final destination and a tv set. i am flying through valleys and around sharp corners. the silver dragon is proving his lordship of the road. i know it is beautiful around me and i am tempted to slow down and look but i have become a carnal man driven by pure instinct. rugby. that single word makes my right foot heavier and i press on.

yesterday 3pm:
KICK OFF! I am still 70km away. I look at my trusty radio. Surely finding a good signal is unlikely out here in the mountains?! i decide to try anyway. 99.7fm... and there it is!!! RECEPTION! i would have prefered it to have been the reception of dragon peaks resort but this was still something unexpected and something that tasted like heaven. i hear the welcome sounds of nkosi sikilela crystal clear resonating in my car as it speeds hurriedly along. my mothers warnings of 'drive safely my son' have been long forgotten. my heart swells with pride as i hear the cheer of the crowd and the blast of the whistle...

yesterday 3:30pm
according to the radio commentators we are all over the wallabies and this seems like a game to watch. the mixed afrikaans english commentary has started to really bug me because i only know whats going on half the time. i see the resort. i turn in. the is a guard at the boom. i drive up at pace. "lift the boom buddy..." i think loudly enough for him to maybe hear. as i get nearer he realises that im not stopping. he starts to lift the boom thinking that only a bona fide guest could display such confidence behind the wheel. the boom is now high enough for me to sneak through and i know it. as i approach he scans my windscreen for my sticker (or whatever i am meant to have). But it's too late. I am in! I sure won that little contest! he he! The carnal instinct has grown. The 10km speed limit in the resort is somewhat laughable.. In 2 minutes flat I am seated in front of the box. The green and gold so much more colourful than the voices of the radio guys.

yesterday (time unknown)
it has been a nail biter of a game and we are into the last 5 minutes. Larkam clears. Down Steyn's throat. He lines up. I think 'no ways'. Camera angle is perfect. The ball floats. My heart bounces. Up it goes. And it's there!! Flip, WHAT A KICK!! Thank goodness i didn't have to hear that on radio. That was a feast for the eyes not the ears...
Scores are level. Momentum positively ours. We move forward again. Ruck. Steyn in position. Pass. Strike. Clean. I realise that the net happiness of the south african population hangs on the progress of that little white ball. It's progess pleasing, i rise to my feet in the most united south african movement since the soweto riots (yes, the game was on youth day and that little sentence took me awhile so go and read it again will you?). South African's stand. From Boksburg to Boputhutswana we are on our feet. Nationwide there are at least 23 million high fives in the 10 seconds to follow. Flip, this is going to be a good weekend. I can feel it already.

yesterday 8pm
Im still smiling. The fresh berg air fills my lungs and makes me feel so alive. I sit with my mother and step-father and chat about the mundane things that parents and kids love chatting about. At time it gets slightly serious but on the whole it is just chit-chat. And it's great. I'm here, exams are over, i love the people im with and the whole horizon is screaming God's majesty in a way that makes the screams of the newlands crowd sound like whispers.

You just know when something is going to be great.

the first thing economists do

So I have been at the textbooks lately and been rather enjoying it too. In the last 2 days I have been getting stuck into some economics and have become rather interested in the method of analysis used by economists. Any economy will have vast amounts of variables that are all interconnected in many (either obvious or discreet) ways. Economists develop and analyse relationships between variables so as to gain understanding of what happens when something changes (i.e. the chain effect of decisions made by government or the reserve bank etc). I have been rather impressed by their method of analysis. Let me ellaborate by giving an example of a way that economists naturally go about their investigation:

They will look at a situation and examine 'ceteris parabus' what will occur if something changes. Ceteris parabus literally means: 'all else being equal'. So what happens is that they examine DIRECT cause and effect relationships. Secondary effects and spin-off consequences are ignored. Only the main stuff is examined and once that is understood then secondary effects can be considered. For example (stay with me you non-financially interested people... there may be something non-financial in store later...) if interest rates increase (as will happen the next time the reserve bank meets) then investment spending decreases. This is because people don't spend a lot of money when money is expensive and money is expensive when the interest rates are higher. Less investment spending leads to lower production which leads to lower national income. There we go! We have just looked at the relationship between interest rates and investment spending 'ceteris parabus'... What we didn't consider though is that by raising the interest rates, some people will benefit by earning a HIGHER income. Consider the man who has R3million in the bank... If the interest rate rises 50 basis points then he will earn an extra R15000 per year for doing nothing. (Kinda makes you want to have R3mil in the bank doesn't it?!) But we condidered him as an afterthought. The main relationship was analysed not the accompanying one because it held the predominant effect. Ok, ok... so what is the life lesson?... Well, i guess that it can be a handy skill to be able to analyse life 'ceteris parabus'. To be able to see the main relationship. the main cause that is causing the effect in a given situation. To be able to identify the crux of a matter that may have many negligible 'cruxes 'that could confuse a man. To distinguish the salient matter at hand. (Ok, i think it's becoming obvious that i'm saying the same thing but looking in the thesaurus for fancier words everytime. ha ha!) I think that is called wisdom. The ability to see things for the way that they really are. The wise man will know the heart of the matter and he will concern himself with that heart. The foolish man will not see the defining issue and will get caught up in trying to understand things that really don't matter at the end of the day. Or the beginning. Wisdom. Seeing life as a series of interconnected variables and being able to understand each one ceteris paribus and thus understand the flavour of the whole. Wisdom.

Economists also do something else that is quite handy, but you can catch that thought in my next blog post...

ideas

well, now that i'm into the hectic time of exams again i think my blogging will become neglected. either that or it will flourish due to the practice of avoidance.

I came across the following quote that I thought was great. It's by a guy called Keynes and he is considered one of the founding minds in today's economic thinking. Funnily enough this guys thoughts have been published in EVERY economic textbook printed since his death. That's funny for when you read the quote. So i actually should write this paragraph after the quote but hey.

The difficulty lies, not in the new ideas, but in escaping the old ones, which ramify, for those brought up as most of us have been, into every corner of our minds.
John Maynard Keynes

Unlearning might be as valuable as learning. In today's culture where information and ideas are so freely shared and tolerated the greatest asset to a man's critical thinking may well be the ability to throw away ideas rather than his ability to formulate them.

Ideas hold a man hostage to the ramifications of those ideas. Every world view has consequences that permeate throughout his mind. They define his decision making, his reactions to key events, his relationships and even his life ambition. Ideas, once embraced, form the framework for living.

Now comes the tricky part. Ideas are like fungi. And I know a lot about fungi from living alone... i watch it breed in the fridge (just joking!). Anyways, ideology enters our minds through the subtlest of mediums most of which we are not in control of and there they incubate in our minds only to escape in our actions. Hectic.

Man must be the custodian of his own thinking. He must filter. He must dispel wrong ideas and embrace truth. Man must know truth or else he will have no option but to lie.

So i keep coming back to The Word. My benchmark. It's only untruth that needs to be unlearnt cos truth never dies.

reality

when the familiarity of the supernatural causes it to become the natural

prosperity

"to be prosperous would not require much of me, contentment is all that it entails"
- relient k

an ode to my toenail

many weeks he has walked with me
detached and damaged
held in place with plaster
his roots no longer able

more dead everyday
my body has been saying goodbye
the bed has been made for another
the replacement is young but he's alive

he served me well
but when the going got tough he failed
blue to yellow to gone
he's no longer attached

and neither am i

sexual offenses

so i was listening to the radio this morning and heard some amazingly disturbing news that sex incidences were on the rise at an alarming rate. im petrified by what this means. it is no longer safe for a lady to walk around by herself at any time of the day. that's shocking. that's a rubbish way to live.

but im not surprised. the amount of stimulating mediums around us are ridiculous. no longer subtle, sex shouts from the rooftops: "im cheap. im easy. you can have me. you can have me now." it's moral onslaught. how did it get like this?

because we wanted freedom so badly we threw off the chains of morality thinking that morality was freedom's obstacle. now we sit with bigger chains. stuck in a world where sexual freedom has made us all slaves of the consequences.

freedom has brought with it a new set of chains
we will always be slaves
we will always have a master
do i serve me
or do i serve You

wallet

i find that my fondness of my wallet is directly proportional to how much money is inside it

forgetfulness

this is my world
this is my opinion
set in my ways
my thoughts criticise
destroying with opinion

then someone disagrees
and then someone has another idea
i can't agree
but i also can't convince them that they're wrong

and i'm left to wonder if it really matters
what is principle?
what is just preference?
what is non-negotiable?
what is not?

and where the blurriness ends the clarity doesn't begin,
and when the clock strikes 12 the hour is still not here,
and when my heart is in chains i realise it's freedom:
to love without faulting
to love the revolting

i am revolting
going against the system
forgetting preferences
remembering acceptance

preferences have killed more than acceptance has protected
love's shield has been tossed and we stand affronted

correction is beautiful
but how much more so is forgetting?

comparing words

the fleeting flurry of words
i type hurriedly
conversation is hasty
but the company fills the gap

i'm at my desk again and loving the fact that i am a part of an online community. but i can't help comparing. i have to compare. my words versus the word.

i was astounded to discover that my chat program (adium) records all my instant messenger chats. i noticed a small icon that looked like a clock and clicked on it only to be led to a new window with so so many recorded past conversations. there were too many to count! and i couldn't remember them. as i read over a few of them i could hardly remember having had those chats. they were forgotten. at the time those words served their purpose. i'd like to think that they helped people or entertained them. or more likely that i was entertained by them, and therefore im not suggesting that they were worthless words. only forgotten.

and then came the comparison... in 6000 years of history one book has stood. A book with no contradictions and no flaws. A book that is unsurpassed in its understanding of human nature and relationships. A book that became flesh and that will never die. It's words cannot be forgotten. It's words have defined truth for millenia. And my heart hungers for it's words far more than the hurried exchanges of preoccupied humans. I reach for the rich fullness of scripture. I can trade text another time....

The word that is alive... my words that are forgotten. Speak God, and I will listen.

my words

you've said enough
hold the tongue and be quiet
but there's a joke to be told
so the thinks he should try it

taking the risk he soon realises
that humour involves compromises
they laughed at the joke but the damage was clear
the chuckle rings louder than the inevitable sear

another casualty
another sore
and though it you i terror
im the prisoner of war

the mouth that builds is the mouth that destroys
the tongue that helps is the tongue that enjoys
tearing and dealing, arguing, demeaning
i know you're hurting but it's me that needs healing

you've said enough
hold the tongue and be quiet
but there's a joke to be told
so the thinks he should try it

today

unless a man has strength to give he has weakness to feed. i guess that is it then. under pressure mediocrity will always take the form of either victory or defeat. you stand or you fall. you win or you lose. in the battle of today there are no stalemates and there are no friendly matches. it's the league. it's the cup final. it's mouldable history. it's me and it's this day. and the pursuit of victory consumes me.

thinking about a dog

there is this dog that i love to play with. he is a great dog and i used to take him for training. he sits and lies down when i tell him to and he has a great personality. yes, dogs have those. he turned me into a dog person rather than a cat person. anyway, i was on my way to my friend's house (the real owners of the dog) and i realised that i was going to see Saabie (the dog) again and i got all excited. then i stopped getting excited. then i thought about this thought that i'm going to try and hurriedly articulate here. so forgive me for talking about my own little world again and forgive me too for expecting that you will find this interesting. it's just a thought anyway.

just as i was getting all excited to be seeing Saabie i realised that i had just showered and that i was wearing my nice new clothes (the same ones i bought while buying my bath robe) and suddenly i realised that i actually didn't want to touch the dog afterall. hectic. my attitude changed totally just because of a few material considerations. and that got me thinking you know. nearly every benefit in this world has a cost. the new bmw is sheer driving pleasure but it needs insurance. wining and dining is great till the bill arrives. and patting the dog is a good idea until i wear the nice clothes.

what did buddha even say?

i have recently started reading this philosophy textbook as a bed-time book. that quickly changed to reading it as a day time book. I have decided to reserve night times for fiction alone. anything else is way too heavy. My upper eyelids need very little gravitational pressure at night time- they always seem quite enthusiactic to spend the night with the lower ones. Like long-lost friends they crave one another's company. This is a ridiculous tangent.

I was speaking about the book. It's fascinating that separate groups of people have been trying to answer the same set of questions for 1000's of years. Still there are no clear answers! Is there life after death? Well, no-one knows for sure... They can't seem to find heaven on Google Earth. Are there angels and demons? I dunno, ask Dan Brown. What's the meaning of life? Well, there are many meanings and none is superior to any other. Apparently. There is nothing conclusive... but is this a good thing or a bad thing for Christians?

I can give you no more than my personal opinion which is: Answers to life's greatest questions lie hidden. Purposefully concealed by the master concealer. He doesn't want to be proved, nor does he need to be. Those who seek, find. Those who question with true open-mindedness find answers. The moment God allows himself to become provable he dismisses a humans need for faith. And faith is a prerequisite for pleasing him. So basically, if God got proven one day he would not be very pleased.

And where does this leave the Christian as he sees other faiths as a threat to his own? Hm. This has always had a generally divided opinion but I'll throw my 2 cents in... God is true and truth comes from him. I would vouch to say that the Bible would be enough of a source of truth and guidance alone but i have always dabbled in literature from other faiths too. A little Kahlil Kibran, a little Richard Bach, a little Marx. And such journeys of thought have always left my faith in Christ stronger. The way I see it is that truth (as an exclusive concept) will prevail. It has to for it to be truth. If truth sinks then it was never truth in the first place. If I am convinced that what I believe is the truth then it shouldn't worry me that what I read elsewhere from other schools of thought will prove my belief wrong. Knowledge will always build towards one conclusion for the man of faith.

My philosophy textbook hardly speaks about Christ and it gives all faiths an equal chance of being believable. Even the faith of choosing no faith. I think it is good to immerse oneself in literature even if it is not Christian stuff. I am aware that this is a dangerous proposition as many have been led down weird paths as a result of this seeking. But for the person who knows that what they believe is true, then ANY knowledge will support that, based on the fact that it is truth and truth is incorruptible. And for that man, the questions and conclusions of other faiths will serve as a gleeful reminder that Christ has found you and given clarity unmatched. That Christ has shown himself to you such that doubt is not a reasonable option...

black on white is boring

Communication is most valuable when it is most intentional and when there is a cost involved that shows a willingness to communicate.

The cost could be financial (like a phone call) or it could be the cost of time… or the cost of effort in order to make the contact. But whatever the cost is, when it is spent, communication becomes more valuable.

I have recently (last 10 months) got into Instant Messaging (otherwise known as IM- in the world of abbreviated language… and yes, such a world does exist and is growing in number). My attitude towards it has fluctuated between poles of loving it and hating it. I have seen it’s usefulness but also its pitfalls.

We cannot, however, analyse the tool without analysing the user of the tool. Money is not bad. It is not evil. It is a tool that we use- a medium of exchange. But money is able to unlock and amplify things in a human that are not commendable like greed, envy, selfishness and materialism. It can also unlock positive things like generosity and dependence. Money is blameless. It’s the humans that give definition to the situation, not the tool. Likewise, when analysing something like chat, it is key to remember that the problems don’t lie with the programmes but rather with those using them…

(Please note: I have failed to identify and scrutinise the BENEFITS of chat and there are many! In the same way that my golf coach never told me what I was doing right and only what was wrong, I am doing the same here. It is a biased article. It’s the black side of the grey.)

Here are some of the dangers of instant messaging…

1. It’s convenient. It is easy to hop onto mxit, or gmail chat, or msn. You can do it anywhere and it takes quick.

2. It’s inexpensive. It costs next to nothing to chat to someone online.

3. It’s situational. I see you online, you see me online. We say hi. We wouldn’t have bothered to say hi if we weren’t both online. There was no purposeful intent, merely the response to situational ‘proximity’.

4. There is a greater dependence on text to achieve what previously required human involvement. What if someone is really not doing well when you ask them: ‘how u’ in hurried tones as you seek to reply to the people replying to you? What if you catch wind of it through the bland vehicle of text? Do you go visit them? Or do you reply something like: “shame, sorry to hear that… thinking of you.” Cute. Real cute. Text achieved nothing.

I would just like to mention that I have not been personally hurt through chatting, although it does seem to sound like it as I re-read what I have written. I guess my point of frustration is that I know that text can be full. I read John Donne, Philip Yancey, The Bible, even John Grisham, enough to know that text can be loaded with content, thought and meaning. Text can be rich in how it makes you think, feel and reason. So it is only natural that I should feel some sort of disappointment at the hurried use of text nowadays. Text that is empty. Devoid of genuine concern and lacking in its ability to comfort, counsel and captivate.

And the power of language is stripped by the speaker. The very man who wants his words to mean something renders his voice an inaudible whisper.

Book Review- Soul Survivor

Hey guys, so I'm dropping the formal prose just to let you know that i finished reading a great book this morning. I have been making my way slowly through Philip Yancey's Soul Survivor for the last two months now. The book's subtitle is "How my faith survived the church" and Yancey speaks about how his own fragile faith was held together through certain role models through his life. He devotes a whole chapter to each of these characters some of them being Leo Tolstoy (a Russian novelist), G.K. Chesterton (an English preacher with a personality), historical figures such as Mahatma Gandhi, John Donne and contemporaries such as Annie Dillard (Pulitzer Prize winner).

Without expressing my own thoughts too much I think it is safe to say the following: The Church has caused much damage over the years. It has been responsible for wars, dodgy political movements, private agendas and worst of all, individual hurt on a grand scale. Yancey seeks not to defend the church as much as he seeks to defend faith- at the most crucial place ever... the heart of every single believer. Keep hope alive. Learn wisdom so as not to repeat the same mistakes. But most of all, keep faith alive. Feed the flickering flame that is meant to light the world.

I have always been a big Yancey fan and this book was great for me because it was the most personal of all his books that I have read thus far. I got a bit of an inside scoop into his childhood and his struggles which I really enjoyed. (It's always nice to know that the famous ones struggle just like everyone!) Some of his books I find a little bit 'mono-theme-ish" but this was far from being that... I think that writing about a new character every chapter kept the book amazingly fresh and remarkably insightful.

Philip Yancey is a man with many opinions and ideas. He has allowed questions to consume his thinking and spiritual world such that we benefit from his well-weighted conclusions. I guess if I ever had to identify spiritual role-models in my life Yancey would be right up there.

my eyes

my only lens on this world
my visual dependence;
lack of perspective
that keeps me looking

these are my eyes
my smudged windows
responders to my mind's
crooked instructions

look not at man
compare not to him
o eyes if you can
don't fall into sin

look up, not around
better yet see the ground
see the rubble, see the dust
see the dirt if you must

enough to know that this dirt could be
the very same dirt that will one day swallow me
what am i to compare to the strength of a brother?
what am i to see myself as something other?

i am the rubbish, yet my eyes still pry
to find someone else more rubbish than i
and the only way i find him is to believe the lie
that the rubbish i seek is in some other guy

it's me. i am he.
and i need Thee
now more than ever
i need to see
You as superior
and me facedown
no motives ulterior
not wearing your crown

see o eyes! you fight without cause
my God knows how to win my wars
my eyes will again look up not around
and my heart will again know your renown

gandhi's humility

From the life of Gandhi I see a man who confronted the harshest environments with the quietest, strongest strength. The taste on my palette, from my hurried bite of history, tells me that Gandhi really didn't think much of himself. He did however think highly of the certain set of principles by which he lived. He rose early. He prayed. He washed. He fasted. A true example of discipline. What I find so remarkable about Gandhi though is that he was disciplined as though discipline was mandatory. He didn't see extra merit in the procedures and routines that he busied himself with- he merely saw them as being essential for appropriate living.

The by-product of his disciplined is amazing to analyze: Instead of Gandhi becoming smug about his ability to be disciplined, he seemed to display the utmost tolerance for people who made mistakes. When people failed morally he seemed quite understanding and compassionate. Never using himself as a point of comparison he appealed to the innate sense of right and wrong in humans in order to improve their own lives and the lives of those around them. (sounds a little like Jesus to me).

Without getting too much into the exact details, Mahatma Gandhi has been credited for two main things:
1. Stopping much bloodshed when the East-Asian countries were being formed. During a time of rife Muslim and Hindu discord and active aggression, Mahatma fasted and prayed for the violence to stop. On his third day of fasting, weak and quite prepared to lose his life for his ideals of peace and tolerance, the fighting stopped and people started to listen to the raspy voice of a man who knew how to give himself away for something he believed in.
2. Closer to home, Mahatma has been credited with accelerating the racial reformation in South Africa. He was a catalyst in ending the Apartheid regime simply by believing that man deep down wants to be good. That man wants to be noble. And Mahatma helped show us what exactly what being noble meant.

Despite his obvious strength and endurance (here is a link to an awesome post on the meaning of Christian endurance), Gandhi never seemed to consider himself as being superior! He saw himself with the soberest of judgment. History has esteemed him because he did not esteem himself.
It is unwise to be too sure of one's own wisdom. It is healthy to be reminded that the strongest might weaken and the wisest might err. - Mahatma Gandhi
Err he may have, but weaken he didn't. Always aware that he was a fallible human, he still set out to achieve what many think impossible: a mark on history that can never be erased.

Gandhi ended his life with bullets in his chest. Being controversial has obvious dangers. Though this again tells me that Gandhi had principles for which he really would die. His life a reasonable expense for the off chance that mankind might be peaceful. To consider your life nothing- is that not the essence of humility?

I cannot help but see traces of Jesus in this man who never actually put his faith in Christ. Maybe the most obvious observation is this:

Jesus. His life a reasonable expense for the off chance that I may be saved

a historical future

My words, at best, will reflect reality accurately. That is the highest level that my words can attain. The noblest words are those that take reality and paint the vivid pictures so that you may understand reality by reading them. Words that appeal to our minds eye and make pictures for our imaginations that are close to reality... well I guess we can say that those words are being used to their full potential. Language is at its apex in purpose when it is representing reality best.

My words, however, are just so limited. They can merely represent. They cannot create. I can never speak things into being. I cannot speak my day into being. Oh yes, I can describe the day, and maybe do a half decent job at telling people of the way that the sunlight refracted off the neatly spun spider's web and glistened in the pale shadows. The shadows looked pale because they looked like they didn’t want to be shadows at all, but rather, given the choice would gaze at the sun all day. Get the picture?

If those words got your mind seeing colours and images then I guess I did a pretty decent job. My tool is mere text. It’s black on white. It’s empty apart from your mind. Words are the expression of reality.

What about God? When he spoke, he created. When he gave the word the heavens were made. And the craziest thing of all is that reality continues apart from our interpretation of it. It exists outside the realms of our speculation. Reality is and expression of his Word.

When I initially shared this thought with my friend, Rich van Lieshout, he asked the question: “What about Tolkien? He created Middle Earth…” Humph! Good question I guess… But Middle Earth in essence doesn’t exist. Neither does Gandolf. Neither does Voldemort. (Yes, yes, I know he’s from Harry Potter not Lord of the Rings!) He has created a separate reality that is most believable and somewhat enchanting but he has not created anything material in this dimension of reality, as we know it. And that for me is relieving, because between you and me, I wouldn’t enjoy knowing that Sméagol is real!

I could never tell you who I am going to be. I can speak to you of intent but never of finality. Yet, God has revealed himself to us in his Word. The word that is final. The word that has been spoken of things to come. When my God speaks, it is. When he commands it becomes. My words may try to represent what I find in him, but his words ultimately define me and my whole reality. His word creates. My words represent.

Man is unable to create history with his words; he can only create history with his actions one act at a time. We depend on the conversion cycle of time as it shifts life from future through the gates of the present into the past. Yet God exists outside of that. He has spoken and we were created. He has spoken too of an ending that I am a part of. It’s the historical future that includes me. It blows my mind to think that I am a part of something certain that is to come. His Word is indeed a lamp to my feet.

integrity

when what is seen is identical to what is not

today is another taxing day

I am frustrated.

I do not like to think that this blog is about me and my feelings... i would aim to channel what i feel (and the reasons for those feelings) into some sort of conceptual idea. If these were just stories about me and how i feel then i guess that would be pretty stupid 'cos everyone has their own batch of amazingly interesting stories that all deserve to be told and listened to... so i look beyond my frustration to a cause of it. an exploration that can help more than just myself.

im at my desk. it's now only 3 hours till i write my most formidable opponent. His name is Taxation. he scares me like you have no idea. More than i love my bath robe i despise Taxation. The fact that it is difficult should however not be the cause for frustration because with enough work I am able to understand even the most difficult elements of STC, interim dividend and all those other scary components of the course. Frustration (as an english word) should be reserved for things that really are frustrating. In other words, frustration shouldn't really be used to describe something that you haven't really tried hard to fix.

Another example quick- an easy one this time... Let's say you were reading something and you came across the word 'blague' and you didn't know what it meant... you cant then say that it is frustrating that you do not know the meaning because with sufficient effort you would be able to find it out. It's just unknown. Not frustrating.

Therefore it is not right to say that Taxation is frustrating. But I will tell you what is:

The collective thickness of my textbooks for this semester is well over the thickness of 6 Bibles put together. And their text is much smaller. And they have more numbers than the book of Numbers (squared)... hard to believe i know.

And yet I will spend hours in my varsity books trying to figure out a concept. Labouring over the parts that i don't understand. Getting to grips with key concepts. And I do it all for this life.

I glance nonchalantly across the room and notice my Bible lying there. Untouched for 4 days now... Crazy to think that I spend hours every day in my varsity books that teach me how to succeed in this world and leave The Word unattended. As if this world is 100x more important than the next. As if I'm on my head. Again. The principles I thought i knew yesterday have again been re-learnt today. The priorities I have wanted my whole life long are still skewed.

Not for lack of effort.

I am forced to concede that Christianity is a harder road that causes me more frustration than any other...

Another taxing day awaits...

facebook

Facebook. Myspace. One and the same really. Now obviously there has been much deliberation and debate around these two programs and I am going to give my personal viewpoint on the matter. Now while I wish that my viewpoint would be the one to end all subsequent discussion it is not what I am really hoping for. Maybe this is just my voice joining the chorus of misaligned opinions and doing nothing other than mis-aligning them some more... but here goes.

1. The difference between needing it and it needing you...
It is a good starting point I reckon. Can you live without facebook? Yes. Can facebook survive without you? No. Facebook has more of a need for humans to network than man has the need to do so. Where previously people were forced to express social longing and needs for socialisation in the immidiate world around them, people are now able to do so in an environment that is more impersonal than personal. I just wonder about the repercussions of people replacing regular social contact with virtual social contact. I can't remember the last time a stranger introduced themselves to me and asked to have coffee (presuming that it has ever even happened...) Yet in the last 2 weeks i have been asked to coffee twice by perfect strangers who found my page interesting?? How does that work? The bottom line is that we can get by fine without it. It depends on us and yet because we give it so much attention and time (point 3) we create a situation where we need it. Where we can't get by without it. Seems a bit upside down to me.

2. Is the innovation creating the need or is the need creating the innovation?...
Ah, my favourite view of technology is this: Technology must make your life easier. If it makes your life more complex and difficult then it's not serving it's purpose. Technology needs to give us time, not take it away. Technology needs to simplify not complexify. (that word just got created... it used to be that the dictionary defined the english language... but now it seems i can 'add to dictionary' ... so you will be pleased to know that complexify is now officially a word. yes, technology has made me a god... sorry for this tangent...) Technology must assist rather than hinder. I will always maintain that if the inclusion of new technology into your life steals time and energy then technology in that specific instance is not serving it's primary purpose: to make our lives easier.

And yet, i feel as though i should have a facebook. I feel excluded because i do not have one. Maybe i will miss an invitation (for the record, i love being invited for coffee..) Maybe i will miss something. I don't know what I will miss really. But I feel like it is something. And suddenly i realise that the innovation has created in me a need to have it. Surely technology is working backwards here? ... It should be that there was a need and now technology is meeting it. I have no doubt that this is how it started and that it works this way around for some and consequently I would have to concede that facebook is terrific. For those people only. For those (like me) who feel that the innovation has caused the need, i would question your attitude towards technology. Is it helping you or are you helping it?

3. How much idle time do you spend between your face and your book?
If points 1 and 2 have failed to register anything significant with you then i would like to suggest a point 3 that for me personally became the deciding factor. Time. It is precioius. I throw enough of it down the toilet already without needing any help from facebook. How much time does it take from you? If you had to invest the time that you spend there into another (dare i say, more noble) initiative would it pay more dividends? For me, subjectively speaking, the clear answer is yes.

This is more of a personal standard than anything else. It is certainly no dig at people who find valuable meaning in being connected via facebook, myspace or whatever else. If anything I am envious of the people who don't have the same struggles of hesitation that i have. Regardless, let's keep our heart where our treasure is. Let's not replace personal interaction with online chat.

Let's not reduce ourselves to virtual outlines and 'about me' explanations. The greatest treasures lie hidden, not advertised.

hm. interesting

it was thursday. i had a revision class for my accounting test the next day and the class had been going well. our kind lecturer had been giving many clues and advice for the paper the next day. now for those who have non-financial brains, this isn't complicated at all, so don't be afraid to venture on.

Interest can mean one of two things. The way that we are most accustomed to using the word is for returns. If you invest R100 at an interest rate of 5% (if this is the case you should consider changing your bank) you will get R105 at the end of the year. This means you can finally buy that coke you were keen on without digging into you capital amount (the R100) ha ha! That's the first way of talking about interest.

The second way? ... interest can be spoken of in terms of ownership. If a holding company has a 57% interest in another company then it means that it owns 57% of it. Our accounting lecturer was kindly explaining to us the 50% 'benchmark' and then we worked though an example. She mentioned that the way that we know if one company is a subsidiary of another is to work out how much interest the one company has in another and if it's greater than 50% then any money invested in that asset would be termed 'investment in subsidiary'. If the interest was less than 50% then it would classify as a regular 'investment in financial assets' . And that was the moment that i probably should have left the venue. Aah. hindsight is a clear view!

6 minutes into the example i (being the attentive student that i am) worked out on the forlorn piece of paper in front of me that the interest (speaking returns now) amounted to a massive 68% on one of the firm's investments. At that point i not-so-cautiously put up my hand and smugly told the lecturer with the audience of approximately 400 people that that investment should be reclassified as 'investment in subsidiary' because it is showing returns of greater than 50%. !!!

i heard just enough sniggering to know that i was wrong on this one. badly wrong. (if you havent worked out how i was wrong then you weren't reading with your whole mind- if that is the case, get off google talk and try again). i was suddenly grateful that i had asked the question rather quietly and was sure that not everyone had heard me. It was one of those times when as you ask the question you know your answer... she was talking ownership when she explained the 50% benchmark. Not returns! You wally!

Unfortunately my lecturer has a microphone. Her voice is extremely audible- something i had always been very grateful for until now... She calmly explained to me that interest (returns) and interest (ownership) were two very different things. Now everyone was in the joke and i felt like calling myself 'brunt' for the rest of the day. And the eye-contact she maintained throughout her explanation was impeccable so that anyone wanting to see who had asked this ridiculous question was effortlessly findable. As if they wouldn't have known from the fact that I was the only tomato face sitting in the venue and from the fact that while all heads were able to tilt (or crane if you were in the front row looking backwards) mine had to remain forwards...

I normally enjoy limelight. Not this time. Hm. Interesting.

an ode to my bath-robe

so tenderly does his soft toweling embrace me
his ruggedness to me being smooth
hastily i claimed him on my winter shopping spree
his warm hugs now hard to remove

call me mad, call me joseph, for being so silly
loving a robe is new for me too
it's safer than girls- he will not leave me will he?
it's safety from cold. just us two.

procrastination

sometimes when it is really bad and i really shouldn't and i have tests coming up and i have deadlines to meet and people i should see but don't... it is at times like these that i use my favorite little tactic of sudden antiprocrastination initiative...

i write a 'to do' list of things i have already done in the last few days (with perhaps the rare inclusion of a few new items) and slowly and methodically put ticks next to words and phrases. every new tick makes me feel increasingly productive until by the end of ticking of all my done items i feel like i have been admiringly busy and need a break.

some chirp. some grunt

I can actually get quite ticked off with the birds outside my window! There are some that sing the most beautiful songs and I love to awaken to the peaceful, melodious choir singing outside my window...

Then there are other days. Days like today... when i don't know what type of mismanaged gene pool has allowed these certain birds to be naturally selected. Clearly singing is no prerequisite for staying alive or evolving. They grunt, for goodness sake. And I can't tell you how much this affects my mood waking up in the mornings, perhaps the entire day!

So silly.

But why can some birds sing and others can't? And why do I care?
(Please ignore the fact that I stared the above two sentences with conjunctions- i hear that with blogging anything goes...)

I'm reminded of Mark Twain when he said, "Man is the only animal that blushes. Or needs to." The animal world is quite different from our world... it used to be that people would argue the similarities between the animal world and the human race and monitor the ways that we were like the chimpanzee and how how it was like us. Nowadays, however, it seems people are more interested in comparing humans with computers. "Is Deep Blue human?"

The point is, we compare. We compare ourselves to ourselves and even to other species!

I'm quite sure the bird doesn't care how it sings. It's me that cares and thinks to myself, "If I was a bird that sang like that i wouldn't open my beak!" It is me that compares the birds to one another. It is me that blushes. It is me who has the curse of comparison.

Perhaps I'm not part of the most evolved species. I'm sure the bird who grunts thinks ill of the man who sings badly and therefore won't open his mouth afraid to look stupid. He will wonder what form of low-life would care about such things.

ambivalence

she pushes
i pull
she runs
i wait

wishing more than all collective hope
that we could synchronise
i'm forced to wonder if square is the round
if confusion is the new niche
if refurbishment is the new destroyer

progress is costly
but how much will it cost me still?
stagnation costs more i guess
so i am spent either way

they tell me
your whole life is ahead of you
but if 22 can't be caught
then why wait for the promise of the rest?

in despair i wait
but claim the day i must
when see i another day like this one?
when want i another life besides mine?

the things i say are the things i'm not sure about
and the things im sure of are the things i can't have
ambivalence they call it
ambivalence it is

blogger convert

so what i have done is to transfer all my posts to blogger and to pretend that myspace did not actually happen. still trying to sort out time zones and everything- that is actually why i am posting this- to see if the post time is accurate. in other words, you should stop reading cos i really have nothing to say here... you know i first learnt that i could ramble on forever back in the days of the pen and paper. i used to journal (well, i actually still do) in this book and often i would finish a thought and there would still be some page left over. however, because it was my desire that i start every day on a clean page (metaphorical of course) i used to babble on about nothing just so that the page could get finished and i could go to bed. problem is, this screen is way longer than my book page (and it has a scroll bar!) and therefore i will have to draw this to a close... later

the weather cock

well, i was hoping to get around to writing more on the life of gandhi, but as of yet i have made no progress. sorry about this. soon tests will be over and i will be able to do all the research i please. but until then i leave with you a great thought from another eastern thinker by the name of Kahlil Gibran:

"the weather cock"
... said the weather-cock to the wind, "how tedious and monotonous you are! can you not blow another way but in my face? you disturb my god-given stability."
and the wind did not answer. it only laughed in space.

my take: i guess life sometimes blows in our faces... and we complain thinking that life was not meant to do this, or that life is somehow unreasonable for blowing in our faces. truth is - life does what it wants. it is in the face of life that we must live. who really cares what is 'meant to' or 'not meant to' happen... life certainly doesn't.

a thought collection

free from the grip of the myspace wonder
i am left to sit and creatively ponder
what is the deal with the self advertisement
does everyone think their story is pertinent?

i guess we're all speaking and no-one listens
i guess we're all hoping that our whispers glisten
more than the shouts of our friends and neighbours
more words he screams as he types these pages

you needn't read if you'd learn more speaking
you needn't comment if you find me fatiguing
but my voice goes out amid the noise of the day
my thoughts get thought without needing a say...

welcome to a collection of thoughts...

gandhi part one

this is a short post... i am busy reading Philip Yancey's book called Soul Survivor and loving it... it is one of those books that you really have to read slowly and absorb because on every page there are concepts that seem worth a full days thought... kinda like this one:

"Mahatma Gandhi knew that his only moral power for others came from what he had already mastered himself. Once, a woman in his village brought her son and asked [Mahatma] to tell the child to stop eating sugar because it was bad for him. She said the child would not listen to her but he would listen to Gandhi. 'Bring the boy back in a week and I will tell him,' said Gandhi. A week later the woman returned with her son. Gandhi took the boy in his arms and told him not to eat any sugar, then bid them both goodbye. The mother lingered behind and asked, 'Bapu, why did you have to wait a week? Could you not have told him last week?' 'No,' he replied. 'Last week I myself was eating sugar.'

the whole chapter is really amazing and i hope to get around to blogging a bit more about Gandhi and his attitudes towards life that seem so remarkably close to the value system the Bible teaches.

hope and return

a common term for me at varsity is 'risk and return'... the higher the risk, the higher the associated return. it has to be this way to compensate the investor for the degree of added risk involved. I haven't thought too much about this but i would reckon the christian equivalent for risk would be hope. Here's why... when investors put their money into stocks they have a certain HOPE for profit.

To say that Christ is my only hope is to make a very absurd statement by the worlds standards. How can Christ be the only hope for the Christian while the non-Christian has shared hope in many different things? It's almost like a share portfolio. It is very unwise to only invest in one share. Even investing in only one industry is very questionable... so surely it seems far more preferable to hope in an array of things here on earth? surely you have more chance of hope paying dividends if you hope in many things??

aah, but that is the deception of this little argument- it is no good to look at risk without looking at associated returns. That is the full picture! Hope in Christ doesn't fail. It leaves the human fully satisfied. And for everyone who has once tasted this hope and had hope satisfied then he will battle to hope in anything other than Christ and the glory of one day spent with him.

or sow you think...

So I was reading my Bible this morning- (I'm behind on my one year commitment but determined to catch up!) and I came across a section in Deuteronomy where Moses is warning the Israelites about keeping covenant with God. I have made the following tiny observations about what I was reading which collectively may be quite interesting:

1. The Law that was given to the Israelites was unlike any other social code known at the time. It was precise, strict, difficult, complicated, intricate and a whole other number of adjectives that will turn out to just be synonyms for the ones already mentioned! The code was impossible and yet it was set. It was non-negotiable.

2. God seems to have a split personality or maybe better put: God seems to fluctuate between two very intense extremes. God promises to greatly BLESS his people if they follow Him and are faithful to the law and if they honour and love him wholeheartedly. Then on the other hand he seems so ready to CURSE them at the first signs of rebellion. In fact, it seemed to me that God was more ready to tell his people about possible curses. Deuteronomy 28 vs 1-14 is God explaining blessings of fruitfulness and prosperity followed by vs 15-68 detailing curses of plagues, ruin, oppression, captivity, disease and dispersion. I don't feel that I have the necessary understanding to comprehend why there appears to be a greater emphasis on curses other than maybe God was trying the 'scare tactic' and reminding them of where they came from and of what what now required of them. This, however is not the point. The point of this chapter was not to reveal that God appears more ready to curse for this is surely nonsense! This passage reminded me of something in God's nature that we all too often forget: God has no middle ground. You are either for or against Him. He is either for or against you. It is impossible to live somewhere in between these two very severe extremes. God was urging his people to pick a side and to deal with the consequences of that decision.

3. Covenenant. A word that has lost all meaning in today's society where changes in mood and feelings are considered to be important things. (even while posting this blog there is a drop menu where i can choose my mood- what for, i don't know!) I don't want to get too distracted from the main thought here but I am noticing more and more how our convenience culture that seeks to be understood without wanting to understand is placing emphasis on mood and feeling as being more and more valid in explaining behavior. It seems that God was almost speaking directly against this when emphasising COVENANT as the groundwork for His relationship with man. Covenant means irrevocable decision of the will. It's a promise. It's a commitment that cannot be altered, edited, argued against or neglected. It is so strong that neither mood nor feeling has any power to undermine it. The Jewish culture is rich in records of covenant. They understood that a sound decision made once was relevant for every day as if it had been made afresh every morning.

4. God's integrity never fails. If there is something that I love most about God it is the fact that He has what I long for. He has integrity. Absolute. He is God and still he doesn't ask us to do what he is not already doing. "Love me with all your heart" ... because I love you that way. "Be pure and set apart" ... because that is what I am. His Word is full of his own integrity. The first few verses of chapter 29 (following the blessing/curse narrative) simply remind the Israelites that God has integrity. That He has kept the covenant. That He will keep the covenant. That God is not swayed by emotion or mood even though His heart is full of more emotion than we can ever know.

5. (and this is where my own logic fails me horribly!) Deut 30v11 "Now what I am commanding you is not too difficult for you or beyond your reach." 'YES IT IS!', I scream as I read this and understand the ramifications of every word. It seems that God is being literal when saying "be perfect as your Father is perfect"... there is no poetic license being used. This is no metaphor. And how I wish it was. "The word is very near you; it is in your mouth and in your heart so you may obey it" (v14). Today perfection is required of me. The most difficult social code is tied up with the most real and honest expectation of fulfillment.

6. 'You will sow much seed but harvest little'. This comes as a warning to the Israelites for failing to obey the commands and decrees given to them. It seems that God doesn't really care about how much seed we plant or how busy we make ourselves (even in ministry initiatives). All he really cares about is our obedience. Are we pure? Are we set apart? Do we fulfill the covenant we have made with him?

Wow, it seems the Word of God has been quite ruthless with me this morning. It tends to do this time to time. Maybe it's punishment for being behind on my daily readings :-) ... Or maybe, just maybe, it's God loving me enough to extend Himself into my little world and remind me, little me, that He longs for relationship. His heart beats for his people still. His heart is set on covenant with me. Yet in the brutal assault from His Word this morning I hear the quiet whisper of the one who loves me saying: "I want to bless you... choose me again today".