Turkey Recall

 It’s true that the older you get, the less knowledgeable you become. A younger version of me arrogantly thought I could change the world. You can imagine my surprise when my world ended up changing me!

A couple of years back, I travelled to Turkey for six months on an English-2^nd Language teaching secondment with the school I had been working for in London. The idea was to serve the people I met, get to know them and share my spirituality with them. I guess it was also an experiment. I wanted to see how my faith would stand up in a completely new culture, one where even the calendar didn’t remember my Christian heritage! When I got there was that I felt completely overwhelmed and alienated. I remember being initially quite freaked out by the Islamic call to worship every morning. The evening classes started and I made friends with the business English students. I didn’t expect to feel as lonely as I did. Then each student, one by one, invited me to their house, took me on visits to the sites of Istanbul and took me out for meals. I was readily included in every social activity and warmly received into the community. They showed me a tangible kind of love, a love that doesn’t just talk but actually is shown in action.  

I know that my culture does not place such a high value on welcoming foreigners. I know my faith does but bizarrely the Turks showed me what the story of the Good Samaritan is all about. I was humbled by their love. I found God there. On the day I left the school I was laden with gifts. Not just feeble, last minute gifts but beautiful ones: a little Turkish carpet and bag, a beautiful delicate Turkish plate and a fantastic coffee book on the sites of Turkey. I was flabbergasted. My perspective on my earth-shaking abilities changed. If I did change their lives in any small measure, I think the favour was reciprocated in triplicate.  I guess I have issues with the whole evangelism thing. But I’m not exactly sure what my method is, if there is one. It doesn’t rest easy with me to impose faith on others, unless they are genuinely interested and ask. I don’t know how the rest of you feel about this…  

But I totally identify with this discovery:“Instead of bringing God to unreached places and unreached peoples, I find countless missionaries who say that, while this was how they once thought, time and again they find that these unreached places are the very sites they must go to find God and to be reached. How many of us have learnt too late that that our initial idea, that by serving the world we will bring God to others, has eclipsed the wisdom that in serving the world we find God there.”  Peter Rollins  “How(not) to speak of God”  

Simon Nqweniso

About four years ago, I was working in town and going to a gym in Sea Point. The only saving grace of the exercise regime at this highly unfriendly place of torture was the car guard I happened to meet in the area called “Judah” (his real name was Simon). Every gymming day we would end up talking for ages outside my car. Judah loved boxing and would often demonstrate the moves. He made me laugh a lot. He had a captain’s hat that he loved wearing on his more eccentric days. 

Last year, in September, Judah died of cancer. His conversations just before getting really sick would often revolve around what legacy he would leave. He had nothing (what he did have often got stolen) but he laboured over the garden around the tennis court and he hoped people would remember him by it. The irony is I think he was the bravest, most generous spirited person I have ever had the pleasure to meet. I think everyone who met him recognised that! He should have been on podiums speaking to multitudes – he had that kind of charisma. I don’t fully understand how lives like his can be so “unknown”. I guess I knew him and that counts somehow in some way…but it troubles me that there are so many like Judah who just aren’t seen. 

Hinds Feet on High Places “I have often wondered about the wild flowers,” Much Afraid said. “It does seem strange that such unnumbered multitudes should bloom in the wild places of the earth where perhaps nobody ever sees them …” The look the Shepherd turned on her was very beautiful. “Nothing my Father and I have made is ever wasted,” he said quietly, “…I must tell you a great truth, Much Afraid, which only a few understand. All the fairest beauties in the human soul, its greatest victories, and its most splendid achievements are always these which no one else knows anything about, or can only dimly guess at.”– Hannah Hubbard, (pg34)

Squarepig’s evil twin!

SPIDER PIG!!! Arrrrrrrrrrgh! Run for your life!!!!

Squarepig realises that whenever things get a little too intellectual for her, (Karaoke corner- for higher grade pigs) she gets the unutterable urge to sabotage everything with something totally ridiculous, like Spider Pig!!! At which point she puts on her sticky feet and starts climbing the walls singing this song:

 Spider pig spider pig
Does whatever a spider pig does
Can she spin from a web
No she can’t she’s a pig
Look out
She is a spider pig!