#YesAllWomen

I’ve been reading the tweets all day, and I’m still trying to understand. There seem to be some very genuine and moving tweets about real issues; tweets that highlight the discrimination, misogyny, and everyday issues that women face. And now to get myself into trouble: there seem to be a number of tweets that I just struggle to understand as real ”feminist” issues – not that I don’t see how they can cause offense – but how women should somehow be exempt from offense, when guys aren’t. But that is another post, for now let me highlight what I think is one of the most powerful tweets of the day:

 “Men who decide to respect a woman because they're someone's mom/sister/wife/etc, instead of because she's her own person #YesAllWomen”

The well-meaning saying behind this one is that a men (presumably) must think of a woman they are pursuing as someone else’s relation. This is meant to evoke empathy. What if it were your daughter? Your wife? Etc. Now while I don’t feel there is anything wrong with the saying – we use similar ones when trying to gain sympathy for soldiers (this is someone’s son, daughter, husband, wife, father etc.), it is a great reminder that we need to move to a period where all people are viewed as subjects: their own autonomous beings with intrinsic worth, and not as objects: to be owned. As such, the old saying is meant as a bridge, to help people understand and empathize. The tweet in contrast, is a prophetic reminder that we need to cross that bridge to a place where every person is a person.

Moreover, as I was watching #NotAllMen trend – the expected “devil’s advocate” response to such an emotive topic – I realized that #YesAllWomen has nothing to do with the fact that most men aren’t misogynists, rapers, women-beaters, etc.  It has to do with the fact that these are the experiences of women that should be listened to and acted upon. Moreover, it has to do with the fact that #NotAllMen respect women yet, and #NotAllMen stand up to the few men that don’t. And until #AllMen do stand up to to the extent that the problem disappears, #YesAllWoman will remain a valid #hashtag and more importantly, a necessary movement.

What I miss most...

I have been in the States for almost 6 months now, and there is one thing that I am really missing: friends.

The last few months have been great and there has been an abundance of family - having just got married in January and seeing my family grow at the speed of "I do" has been wonderful - but there is an intimacy in friendship, different entirely from the intimacy of family that I miss. 

I'm not a socialite and as an INTJ on the Myers-Briggs, introversion seems to be my thing, but making friends hasn't ever been too difficult for me, given enough time. I don't think it's something special I do, I've just been very lucky. Mostly through circumstance, I've been forced to be in the presence of people, and when I'm in their presence long enough, I grow on them.

Which is why the last few months have been so difficult. Spending so much time living in two houses 130km apart, and going to two different churches (seldom to the same one three weeks in a row) and not having a job where I can meet new people has meant that I haven't been able to make new friends. Added to this, I'm not sure how long we'll be in Imperial Beach, so there is a certain feeling of futility in trying to make friends.

I miss having someone's house I can just pop around to; a group that just gets together on the weekend - not every weekend, but enough to make it count; being able to invite someone over for drinks; someone with whom to discuss politics; etc.

So in short, just to say. I miss you all. And appreciate friends past all the more.

Reflections on an Easter Service

Sunday was Easter. We got up at 5am to make it to the 6 o'clock service.

When we arrived we were ushered to the church yard where the entire congregation, including choir, priests, lay-ministers, servers etc. (it's an Episcopal church) were gathered around a small fire log, and we were handed a candle. Just before 6 our priest explained the beginning of the service, and at 6 he lit the Paschal candle, from which we all proceeded to light our candles, passing the flame from person to person. We then took part in the procession into the church which was lit only by the light of our candles, being led by the choir in a hymn. A sense of calm reflection descended on me.

We worked our way through the set readings, and then came  the sermon. It started like few other sermons, and it quickly diverged from those other similar-starting sermons. It started with the story of a student congregant who discovered for the first time that not everything in the Bible is historical. And the rest of the sermon and story had nothing to do with how God proved the historical accuracy of the Bible in the student's life, or the student decided to live by faith and not by sight, or how the student decided to reject science and reason. Instead, the priest gave us glimpses into the path that he walked with this student in coming to terms with the a-historicity of the Bible.

What? Did I just hear correctly? You're doing an Easter service and saying the Bible is not the inerrant 100% historical account of God working with His people? That's brave. And that's exactly what I'm looking for. I read Theology at University, and loved. The one thing that never bother me too much, mostly because I had a dad who thought and reasoned, and I must have picked some of that up from him, was that everything in the Bible was not 100% true. This was a shock to many of my fellow theology students who were still starry eyed with wonder at the 6-day creation of a 6000 year old world. Many of them would continue to achieve brilliant grades - better than mine even - in fields like church history, philosophy, old testament studies, new testament studies etc. given by often very liberal professors that they thought were spiritually suspect because these professors were too academic, and gave too much credence to science, textual criticism, and actual history. I think back and wonder how all that time they were exposed to such good thinking, and were able to achieve such good grades, yet so compartmentalized their academic life 

 and their spiritual life (studying what was required, yet never translating that into their faith), that the one never met the other. It wasn't that their faith had reasoned arguments for why the world was 6000 years old, it was just, faith. Pure blind faith.

Which is why I found the sermon on this particular Easter so meaningful. It didn't claim to have all the answers, or deliver a turn or burn fiery speech, from the pulpit. No. It was about being less concerned about trying to establish with 100% certainty what parts of the Bible we can take as historical and which parts are more inspired. In short, sometimes people are so concerned about how (or whether) God has worked in the past, that they completely miss the possibility and presence of him in the present. And if anything, the Bible is not about the God of the past, it is about the living God, the God of the present. 

Coming to America

I've been to the USA several times before, but never with the idea of staying forever, never with the idea of making it home. But then I met a Rebecca and three years later, we're married and living in America. Moreover, we're almost certainly making America our long term home.

Being born and raised in South Africa, and never thinking of any other place as home - not even Taiwan where I spent three years teaching - it has come as a surprise how quickly I have come to think of America as my home. What makes it weird to feel this way is that I am not even allowed the basic privilege of work here yet - all my documents are pending, under review, being processed... some other bureaucratic term. And once I am allowed to work (in a few months time), it will be several years before I am eligible to apply for citizenship. So having very little status, and being years away from being a citizen, I find it strange how much America feels like my home.

Who knows where I'll land up, but before long, when I talk of home, I'll be talking about the USA. 

The Umpteenth First Post

I have started a blog more times than I can remember. It's not even that I start new ones, I just delete my old one and restart that. Why? I don't know. Maybe it's the lack of coherent theme. Maybe it's that sometimes years pass without a post, and to start with such a big gap in the history feel awkward, as if I didn't do my job, and now owe readers something. Maybe it's the fact that the person who wrote the blog isn't the same person who is going to write the blog - I've changed, and God knows what poorly thought out drivel I wrote before...

Clean slates are useful. But sometimes, when used too often become an all too comfortable way of avoiding the past, and dealing with failures. Here's to the last new beginning. And to start, here's the pdfs of my last blog.

My Last Blog in pdf - 1
My Last Blog in pdf - 2
My Last Blog in pdf - 3