(Dan Smith)

We’re all born to broken people on their most honest day of living

and since that first breath… We’ll need grace that we’ve never given

I’ve been haunted by standard red devils and white ghosts

and it’s not only when these eyes are closed

these lies are ropes that I tie down in my stomach,

but they hold this ship together tossed like leaves in this weather

and my dreams are sails that I point towards my true north,

stretched thin over my rib bones, and pray that it gets better

but it won’t won’t, at least I don’t believe it will…

so I’ve built a wooden heart inside this iron ship,

to sail these blood red seas and find your coasts.

don’t let these waves wash away your hopes

this war-ship is sinking, and I still believe in anchors

pulling fist fulls of rotten wood from my heart, I still believe in saviors

but I know that we are all made out of shipwrecks, every single board

washed and bound like crooked teeth on these rocky shores

so come on and let’s wash each other with tears of joy and tears of grief

and fold our lives like crashing waves and run up on this beach

come on and sew us together, tattered rags stained forever

we only have what we remember

I am the barely living son of a woman and man who barely made it

but we’re making it taped together on borrowed crutches and new starts

we all have the same holes in our hearts…

everything falls apart at the exact same time

that it all comes together perfectly for the next step

but my fear is this prison… that I keep locked below the main deck

I keep a key under my pillow, it’s quiet and it’s hidden

and my hopes are weapons that I’m still learning how to use right

but they’re heavy and I’m awkward…always running out of fight

so I’ve carved a wooden heart, put it in this sinking ship

hoping it would help me float for just a few more weeks

because I am made out of shipwrecks, every twisted beam

lost and found like you and me scattered out on the sea

so come on let’s wash each other with tears of joy and tears of grief

and fold our lives like crashing waves and run up on this beach

come on and sew us together, just some tattered rags stained forever

we only have what we remember

My throat it still tastes like house fire and salt water

I wear this tide like loose skin, rock me to sea

if we hold on tight we’ll hold each other together

and not just be some fools rushing to die in our sleep

all these machines will rust I promise, but we’ll still be electric

shocking each other back to life

Your hand in mine, my fingers in your veins connected

our bones grown together inside

our hands entwined, your fingers in my veins braided

our spines grown stronger in time

because are church is made out of shipwrecks

from every hull these rocks have claimed

but we pick ourselves up, and try and grow better through the change

so come on yall and let’s wash each other with tears of joy and tears of grief

and fold our lives like crashing waves and run up on this beach

come on and sew us together, were just tattered rags stained forever

we only have what we remember

from Wooden Heart Poems, released 06 July 2010

Music Video

Without a doubt two of the most significant developments during the late 20th century was the personal computer, which Taleb signifies as a Black Swan Event, and the web, another of those Black Swans. The Web made it’s debut during 1989 and it spread to offices and homes by 1994. Digital cameras arrived on the scene in 1990, cellphones during 1977, cellphones with cameras during 1999, chatrooms opened it’s doors during 1980, Facebook launched 2004, Twitter 2006 and an ever increasing list of portals where digital data is created and stored. The mere act of using the internet during 2011 will create more digital data about an user than the user him-/herself can generate. The dawn of the digital age broke over the earth during 2002 when more digital data was generated than analogue data. 2011 will see another 1.8 zettabytes of data created, 33% more than 2010, or in other words, the equivalent of 57.5 billion 32GB Apple iPads filled with data. Enough to build a technological wall of China, as long and as wide, but twice as high. We truly live in a digital world.

One of the mainstays of the digital era is the hubs, nodes, linking datacables, and wifi signals that create a vast Network of 1’s and 0’s. The network(s) that underlie the digital world is not merely a bunch of microchips and optic fibre, but creates an environment which allows not only digital communication and data creation, but for interactions in the “real” world with very “real” implications. We use networks to order our lives, from buying food to organizing social get togethers, from insiting revolution on the one side of the planet to exploiting the planet on the other side, from building community with family and friends vast distances away to destroying communities close by. Today more than ever before do we realize that we are part of a vast network, both digitally and naturally, where technology matters but networks far exceed the virtual world. It seems there might be truth in the saying that when a butterfly flaps it’s wings in America, it creates a tropical storm in the Orient, a truly networked society.

Last, but not least, is the realization that we live in a day an age, a biosphere where the activities of man(!)kind is shaping the very space we live in. It’s been suggested that a case can be made that we are living in the Anthropocene, a new geological age or even a new geological epoch alltogether. If the suggested Anthropocene is an age it falls under the epoch Holocene. If not and it is recognize as an epoch in its own right, it follows on the Holocene that started approximately 10 000 years ago after the end of the Pleistocene and falls under the period Quaternary, which started an estimated 2.6 million years ago. The term was coined by ecologist Eugene Stoermer and widely popularized by the atmospheric chemist, Paul Crutzen. The Stratigraphy Commission of the Geological Society of London deemed the proposal, to formally accept the Anthropocene as part of the Geological Time Scale, as having merit and thus the proposed addition of the Anthropocene is currently being studied. Accepted or not, we are living in an age where (wo)mankind has an ever increasing impact on the world around us.

The age we are experiencing at the moment often leaves us gasping for air, scrambling for descriptive words. There might be many such word and concepts out there, however, I want to welcome you to… the Digital Networked Anthropocen (DNA).

The shear problem of homelessness, of displacement in the world today, makes this a book everyone should read. It offers us a fresh and honest account of ourselves as displaced. “We are a culture of displacement” to quote a phrase from the book.

In stark contrast to our utter displacement is the deeply rooted need to belong, to be placed. In an ever shrinking, over-populated, virtual world we rush out to grab pieces of superficial, virtual real estate. We occupy our Facebook, Google+, YouTube and LinkedIn spaces in order to belong. We join a myriad of groups and networks in order to orientate ourselves in a four-dimensional ether plasma.

And throughout all of this activity we try to silence the niggling feeling that, with all of the positives of the virtual social world, we are being displaced even more. That we are increasingly disconnected from place, in a sense of our own embodiment, as an essential part, like all other, of Creation. It seems that we have lost our rooting points in the web of life.

It is here, even thought others might not, that I agree with Steven Bouma-Prediger and Brian Walsh on the importance of the Christian faith. To quote them: “[The] Christian faith is a faith that is always placed. Placed in good creation. Placed in time. An incarnational faith.”

It is the loss of our “primal” place in relation to God that we became homeless, drifting into the wilderness of displacement. Thus we journey still today, with the frail memories of a home lost, a garden of provision, abundance and tranquility left behind.

However, we were not left with only the memories of a home lost, we were also gifted a vision of homecoming. A vision that is rooted in the garden-home we left behind, a place that grew into a garden-city. The strength of this vision is not rooted in the mere existence of this fabled garden-city and the promise of a final homecoming but in the ability to come home to it in the present.

And it is in this homecoming that the refrain of Bouma-Prediger and Walsh, that home is a matter of community, pulsates with life. The very act of homecoming implies a homecoming with other, extending the invitation which we ourselves have received.

Thus, we are invited to a homecoming and challenged to be homemakers for others, by extention inviting others to share in this gracious homecoming.

It is also necessary in both public and private life to refrain consistently and empathically from inflicting pain. To act or speak violently out of spite, chauvinism, or self-interest, to impoverish, exploit or deny basic rights to anybody, and to incite hatred by denigrating others – even our enemies – is a denial of our common humanity. We acknowledge that we have failed to live compassionately and that some have even increased the sum of human misery in the name of religion.

We therefore call upon all men and women ~ to restore compassion to the centre of morality and religion ~ to return to the ancient principle that any interpretation of scripture that breeds violence, hatred or disdain is illegitimate ~ to ensure that youth are given accurate and respectful information about other traditions, religions and cultures ~ to encourage a positive appreciation of cultural and religious diversity ~ to cultivate an informed empathy with the suffering of all human beings, even those regarded as enemies.

We urgently need to make compassion a clear, luminous and dynamic force in our polarized world. Rooted in a principled determination to transcend selfishness, compassion can break down political, dogmatic, ideological and religious boundaries. Born of our deep interdependence, compassion is essential to human relationships and to a fulfilled humanity. It is the path to enlightenment, and indispensible to the creation of a just economy and a peaceful global community.

I found this version of the Charter on the official website for the Charter for Comapssion

And now for some good news out of Africa. Poverty rates throughout the continent have been falling steadily and much faster than previously thought, according to the National Bureau of Economic Research. The death rate of children under five years of age is dropping, with “clear evidence of accelerating rates of decline,” according to The Lancet. Perhaps most encouragingly, Africa is “among the world’s most rapidly growing economic regions,” according to the McKinsey Quarterly.

Yet US journalism continues to portray a continent of unending horrors. Last June, for example, Time magazine published graphic pictures of a naked woman from Sierra Leone dying in childbirth. Not long after, CNN did a story about two young Kenyan boys whose family is so poor they are forced to work delivering goats to a slaughterhouse for less than a penny per goat. Reinforcing the sense of economic misery, between May and September 2010 the ten most-read US newspapers and magazines carried 245 articles mentioning poverty in Africa, but only five mentioning gross domestic product growth.

Reporters’ attraction to certain kinds of Africa stories has a lot to do with the frames of reference they arrive with. Nineteenth century New York Herald correspondent Henry M. Stanley wrote that he was prepared to find Zanzibar “populated by ignorant blacks, with great thick lips, whose general appearance might be compared to Du Chaillu’s gorillas.” Since the Biafran War, a cause célèbre in the West, helped give rise in the late 1960s to the new field of human rights, Western reporters have closely tracked issues like traditional female circumcision. In the 1980s, a famine in Ethiopia that, in fact, had as much to do with politics as with drought, set a pattern of stories about “starving Africans” that not only hasn’t been abandoned, but continues to grow: according to a 2004 study done by Steven S. Ross, then a Columbia journalism professor, between 1998 and 2002 the number of stories about famine in Africa tripled. In Kenya, where I was a Peace Corps volunteer in the late 1960s and where I returned to live four years ago, The New York Times description of post-election violence in 2007 as a manifestation of “atavistic” tribalism carried echoes of Stanley and other early Western visitors.

But the main reason for the continued dominance of such negative stereotypes, I have come to believe, may well be the influence of Western-based non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and international aid groups like United Nations agencies. These organizations understandably tend to focus not on what has been accomplished but on convincing people how much remains to be done. As a practical matter, they also need to attract funding. Together, these pressures create incentives to present as gloomy a picture of Africa as possible in order to keep attention and money flowing, and to enlist journalists in disseminating that picture.

Africans themselves readily concede that there continues to be terrible conflict and human suffering on the continent. But what’s lacking, say media observers like Sunny Bindra, a Kenyan management consultant, is context and breadth of coverage so that outsiders can see the continent whole—its potential and successes along with its very real challenges. “There are famines; they’re not made up,” Bindra says. “There are arrogant leaders. But most of the journalism that’s done doesn’t challenge anyone’s thinking.”

Over the past thirty years, NGOs have come to play an increasingly important role in aid to Africa. A major reason is that Western donors, worried about government corruption, have channelled more funds through them. In the mid-1970s, less than half a dozen NGOs (like the Red Cross or CARE) might operate in a typical African country, according to Nicolas van de Walle, a professor of government at Cornell, but now the same country will likely have 250.

This explosive NGO growth means increasing competition for funds. And according to the head of a large US-based NGO in Nairobi, “When you’re fundraising you have to prove there is a need. Children starving, mothers dying. If you’re not negative enough, you won’t get funding.” So fierce is the competition that many NGOs don’t want to hear good news. An official of an organization that provides data on Somalia’s food situation says that after reporting a bumper harvest last year, “I was told by several NGOs and UN agencies that the report was too positive.”

Rasna Warah, a Kenyan who worked for UN-Habitat before leaving to pursue a writing career, says that exaggerations of need were not uncommon among aid officials she encountered. “They wanted journalists to say ‘Wow.’ They want them to quote your report,” she says. “That means more money for the next report. It’s really as cynical as that.”

Western journalists, for their part, tend to be far too trusting of aid officials, according to veteran Dutch correspondent Linda Polman. In her book The Crisis Caravan, she cites as one example the willingness of journalists to be guided around NGO-run refugee camps without asking tough questions about possible corruption or the need for such facilities. She writes, “Aid organizations are businesses dressed up like Mother Teresa, but that’s not how reporters see them.”

Pushed and pulled by slashed budgets and increased demands, journalists are growing increasingly reliant on aid groups. Sometimes that involves not just information or a seat on a supply plane, but deep involvement in the entire journalistic process.

In an online essay written in 2009, Kimberly Abbott of the International Crisis Group discussed a 2005 Nightline program on Uganda that her NGO helped to produce and fund. It was hosted by actor Don Cheadle, the star of Hotel Rwanda. Nightline’s Ted Koppel explained in his introduction, as retold by Abbott: “Cheadle wanted his wife and daughters to get a sense of the kind of suffering that is so widespread in Africa. The International Crisis Group wanted publicity for what is happening in Uganda. And we, to put it bluntly, get to bring you a riveting story at a greatly reduced expense.” According to Abbott, “versions of such partnerships are happening now in print and broadcast newsrooms across the country, though many are reluctant to discuss them too openly.”

Daniel Dickinson, a former BBC reporter who is now a communications officer for the European Union in Nairobi, has seen the impact of technology and economics on reporting on Africa first-hand. “The big difference in the past five to ten years is the expansion of the Internet,” he says. “Journalists have got to feed these animals. Add to that the financial crash, and more and more internationals are taking the content we offer them.”

Ben Parker, co-founder and head of IRIN, a news agency that is part of the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, admires Dickinson’s success. “He does stories and they’re picked up whole,” Parker says. IRIN itself can point to many similar successes in finding takers for its stories on aid projects. “The Western media won’t reprint us verbatim,” he says. “But some plagiarize.”

Lauren Gelfand, a correspondent for Jane’s Defence Weekly who is based in Nairobi, says most reporters she knows string for three or four news organizations to make ends meet, and can’t afford to do time-consuming stories. She saw the effect when she took a year off from journalism to work for Oxfam. “If reporters were going to cover a development story it had to be easy,” remembers Gelfand, noting that the simplest sell was a celebrity visit to an aid project.

Gelfand says that her Oxfam experience helped her to understand just how much attention ngos put on getting their story told. “All the talking points are carefully worked out…. It’s a huge bureaucracy and there are as many levels of control as in any government,” she says of Oxfam, adding that many NGOs are reluctant to cooperate with media unless they know they’ll be shown in a positive light.

To be fair to the NGOs, Gelfand says, “It’s easier to sell a famine than to effect real, common-sense policy change.” And, she says, she continues to believe that most aid workers do what they do because they want to make a difference. Nonetheless, “A lot of what Oxfam does is to sustain Oxfam.”

Stories featuring aid projects often rely on dubious numbers provided by the organizations. Take Kibera, a poor neighborhood in Nairobi. A Nexis search of major world publications found Kibera described as the “biggest” or “largest” slum in Africa at least thirty-four times in 2004; in the first ten months of 2010 the claim appeared eighty-three times. Many of those stories focused on the work of one of the estimated 6,000 or more local and international NGOs working there, and cited population figures that ranged as high as one million residents. Recently, however, the results of Kenya’s 2009 census were released: according to the official tally, Kibera has just 194,269 residents. In 2010, Rasna Warah wrote in the Daily Nation, a Kenyan paper, that while working for the Worldwatch Institute, an NGO, she had published inflated population estimates using UN-Habitat data, despite knowing there was no consensus on the numbers among her former colleagues at the organization. Sometime after 2004, she wrote, population estimates for Kibera started to rise, and “Before we knew it, the figure spread like a virus.” She added, “The inflated figures were not challenged, perhaps because they were useful to various actors…. They were particularly useful to NGOs, which used them to ‘shock’ charities and other do-gooders into donating more money to their projects in Kibera.” Questionable figures of another sort are to be found in reports on the United Nations Millennium Development Goals, a series of targets on poverty reduction and other measures of well-being. UN and NGO officials routinely describe Africa as failing to meet the goals, and the press routinely writes up this failure.

But some experts, among them Jan Vandemoortele, one of the architects of the MDGS, have expressed concern that the goals are being misused. He wrote in 2009 that the MDGS were intended as global targets, but have been improperly applied to individual countries and regions. “It is a real tragedy when respectable progress in Africa is reported as a failure by international organizations and external observers,” Vandemoortele wrote, voicing the suspicion that particular measurements have been selected “so as to present Africa as a failure, solely to gain support for a particular agenda, strategy, or argument.”

Nonetheless, when the UN met in September, The Associated Press quoted UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon as saying, “Many countries are falling short, especially in Africa,” while the Los Angeles Times quoted an Oxfam report as saying, “Unless an urgent rescue package is developed to accelerate fulfillment of all the MDGS, we are likely to witness the greatest collective failure in history.”

The consequences of skewed or incomplete reporting on Africa are not just a disservice to readers but also have the potential to influence policy. “The welfare model [of Africa] is still dominant on the Hill and in Hillary Clinton’s world,” according to van de Walle. Among corporate officials, says Catherine Duggan, an assistant professor at Harvard Business School, the perception is still that “Africa is where you put your money once you’ve made it somewhere else.” Moreover, such reporting is demoralizing to Africans working for change. Martin Dawes, a unicef regional chief of communication for West and Central Africa, says that when there is a disaster, journalists “come to us as aid workers but often don’t talk to the government, which is often what we’re working through. It means that the chances for Africans to show an engaged response is limited. They are written out of their own story.”

Even with shrinking resources, journalists can do better than this. For a start, they can stop depending so heavily, and uncritically, on aid organizations for statistics, subjects, stories, and sources. They can also educate themselves on how to find and interpret data available from independent sources. And they can actively seek out stories that deviate from existing story lines.

But in the end, it will probably take sustained economic progress to break the current mold. Sunny Bindra, the Kenyan management consultant, recalls that in the 1980s, “Japan got attention because it was whacking the US. It’s the same with India and China now.” Until that happens, a sick African woman in labor will continue to be treated as poverty porn, and most Africans will have to starve in order to make it onto the evening news.

This article was adapted from a paper (pdf) written for Harvard’s Joan Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy.

I found this story at the following link on the website of CJR

What is a public library for?

As WWF staff and supporters gathered in Zurich last week to celebrate their half-century, guest of honour Archbishop Desmond Tutu – a long-time champion of fair and sustainable development – warned that we live in a world threatened by greed and consumerism.

“Our desire to consume everything of value, to extract every precious stone, every drop of oil and every creature from the sea knows no bounds,” said the Archbishop. “This quest for profit subverts our present and our future. There are too many people who are getting better and better at exploiting the environmental heritage which belongs to us all. We are not heading for an environmental disaster – we have already created one.”

“We are meant to live in a world which we share, and we are meant to live as members of one family,” said Archbishop Tutu. “And yet whenever we look around, isn’t it devastating to see the inequities and levels of poverty? Our population is increasing, environmental degradation is increasing. How do we resolve these inequities when all we are told is growth, growth, growth?”

However the Archbishop sounded an optimistic note and said he believed humankind could learn to live within its limits. “There is enough for everyone – but not enough for our greed,” he said. “There’s enough for us all to live a full life – so why do we want to destroy the only home we have?”

Since 1961, WWF has been instrumental in getting more than a billion hectares protected, several species brought back from the brink of extinction, and raising more than one billion dollars in conservation finance. The organisation is now supported by more than five million people and is active in over 100 countries on five continents.

Swiss President Micheline Calmy-Rey highlighted WWF’s record of achievements and said the organisation was vital in today’s world. “The protection and sustainable use of natural resources is one of the most pressing issues today. Thanks to WWF we have learned we have to take a holistic approach to the environment,” she said. “Addressing environmental issues at global as well as local levels becomes ever more important.”

Earlier, guests at the gala event in Zurich heard WWF International President Yolanda Kakabdse outline the advances made in conservation in the past half-century. “When WWF was founded there were no ministers of the environment and no environmental treaties. Today such ministries are found in governments worldwide, and treaties are increasingly used to govern and protect the environment,” she said.

“Right from the beginning, this organisation has been built by individuals with a deep and inspiring passion: a commitment to stop environmental degradation and build a future where people live in harmony with nature, ” said Ms Kakabadse. She also joked that the Duke of Edinburgh – President Emeritus of WWF – would have been present were it not for a family wedding taking place in London. In a message Prince Philip said: “Perhaps its [WWF's] greatest achievement so far has been to make a significant number of people in all communities, in all parts of the world, aware of the serious threats facing the world’s natural environment.”

Al-Jazeera anchor Veronica Pedrosa introduced a video-taped message from world-famous naturalist and broadcaster Sir David Attenborough in which he said conservation organisations such as WWF were becoming increasingly important as the planet faces greater challenges. “As WWF has pointed out, this is an issue for everybody because it affects everybody,” said Sir David. “We are dependent on the natural world for everything we need. The job of WWF is more important than ever and it deserves all the support it can get.”

WWF International Director General Jim Leape reminded guests why they were there and of the work still to be done to achieve a fair and sustainable world for all. “The world would be much poorer today without our efforts, yet it is a cruel irony that, for all that we have accomplished together, somehow we have to find a way to do even more. We have to find a way to bend the curves that will define our future – carbon, water, fisheries, erosion of biodiversity; fraying of the fabric of life. We have to find a new way to forge connections with nature.”

“We live in an increasingly urbanised society that is largely ignorant of the wonders that inspire us. And we live in an economy that is still often stubbornly indifferent to the natural systems upon which it depends,” said Mr Leape.

Guests at the gala evening – which was held to say “thank-you” to staff and supporters world-wide – were treated to environmentally-themed theatre, dance, and musical performances, specially-commissioned art installations and a children’s choir. WWF stressed that the costs of the event had been met by sponsors Chopard and Sarasin.

This article was originally posted on the WWF website.

Wie van ons wat hier sit word nie diep aangeraak deur die uitspraak nie? Hierdie is een van die tekste wat ‘n baie belangrike rol in my eie lewe speel, voortdurend word ek gekonfronteer met oorvloed, oorvloedige genade. Nie net is die teks belangrik in my eie lewe nie, dit is ook ‘n teks wat ‘n belangrike rol speel in die storie van die gemeente. Vier en ervaar, die leuse van die gemeente is op ‘n besonderse wyse aan die teks gekoppel. Ongeveer 3 jaar terug, gedurende ‘n tyd van onderskeiding, het die teks die gemeente gehelp om iets van die gemeente se storie, iets van die gemeente se geskiedenis, van die gemeente se huidige konteks en iets van die gemeente se toekoms te verwoord.

Die bekendheid van die teks en die metafoor skep egter ‘n gevaar. Dit kan daartoe lei dat ons nie meer erns maak met die teks nie, dat ons so terloops aanvaar dat ons WEET wat die Heilige Gees deur die teks wil doen, dat ons WEET op watter reis die teks ons vanaand wil neem. Met ander woorde, dat ons die reis KEN en WEET waar die bestemming is.

Die opwinding van die ruimte is dat die teks, nee dat die Heilige Gees, ons opnuut uitnooi om na die teks te luister. Om weer te herkou aan die teks. Ons reis as gemeente is nie beperk tot my reis met die teks nie, inteendeel, die Heilige Gees nooi ons elkeen uit om deel te neem aan die reis. Later in die diens gaan ons dan ook die geleentheid kry om die reis met die teks in stilte voort te sit.

Laat my toe om ‘n stukkie van my reis met die teks met julle te deel. Met ‘n belofte van oorvloed is die eerste vraag wat by my opduik, hoe moet ek dit verstaan; maak die belofte enigsins sin in die tyd en plek waar ek leef? 2000 jaar na Christus, op ‘n planeet wat uitgelewer is aan vernietiging, dood, armoede en aan die ander kant oordadige oorvloed, gemak en hebsug.

Ons ken almal hierdie twee kante van die lewe, altans ons ken sulke stories. Ons streef na die een, die ander probeer ons ignoreer.

Die een kant se storie word vertel in die gegloei van neon, in tydskrifte en op groot billboards. Top Billing en Pasella kom wys ons met smaak en styl hoe so ‘n lewe nou eintlik kan lyk. Groot huise, groot motors, eksotiese vakansies, inkopies in die vreemde en dit alles met styl en sjiek. Dit kom saam met die onderliggende boodskap van genoeg is nooit genoeg nie. Telkens na die soveelste advertensie of nog ‘n episode van een van die vertoon programme is daar so ‘n sagte, soms harder, versugting: “Sou dit nie lekker gewees het nie, so ‘n lewe van oorvloed.” Partykeer verskans ons die versugting so ‘n bietjie en wens ons vir net genoeg, genoeg om so ‘n lewe van oorvloed te lei.

Aan die anderkant van die spektrum is mense waar daar nie eers sprake is van genoeg nie. Daar waar ons bly is dit nie so maklik om die storie raak te sien nie, veral omdat ons so hard probeer om dit mis te kyk. So af en toe kry ons ‘n blik op die kant van die lewe as ons by die verkeerde verkeerslig moet stop of as ons deur ‘n middestad moet ry of as werk ons na een van die buite wyke van Suid-Afrika toe vat. Dalk kry ons dit reg om die realiteit in SA te vermy, maar word ons daarmee gekonfronteer as ons buiteland toe gaan op ‘n besigheidstoer of dalk met vakansie.

Daar is ‘n radikale verskil tussen die manier waarop mense, wat hulle aan verskillende kante van die spektrum bevind, “genoeg” en defnitief “oorvloed” sal definieer. Wanneer Jesus se dat hy gekom het sodat ons die lewe kan he en dit in oorvloed, twyfel of hy die oorvloedige oorvloed van Top Billing en Pasella bedoel het. Aan die anderkant is ek oortuig daarvan dat hy bedoel het dat die mense wat meer vertroud is met die ander kant van die lewe. In die gedeelte raak dit dan ‘n kritiese vraag na hoe ons oorvloed moet verstaan. ‘n Ander manier om hierdie vraag te vra is of materiele goed, oormaat of gebrek enigsins bydra tot die verstaan van oorvloed in die konteks van Johannes 10.

Dorothy Bass, in haar boek For life abundant, antwoord die vraag sommer op die eerste bladsy. Haar antwoord? Nee, dit gaan nie oor goed nie maar oor ‘n manier van lewe. Alles behalwe bevredigend, die antwoord laat ons net met ‘n volgende vraag, hoe lyk die manier van lewe? Ek dink die teks wil iets met ons hieroor deel.

‘n Lewe van oorvloed is ‘n lewe waarin Jesus erken word as die Herder en nie as ‘n rower en ‘n dief nie. Van die laasgenoemde kan niemand ons veel vertel nie. Ons het almal al te doen gehad of ken mense wat te doen gehad het met iemand wat ‘n huis of motor betree met die doel om te steel en te roof. Of dit nou ‘n oopgebreekte deur, ‘n stukkende ruit of ‘n uitnodigende skoorsteen is waardeur toegang verkry word, dit is telkens nie op die gewone manier om deur ‘n uitnodigende deur ingenooi te word nie. In die eerste gedeelte van die teks skets Jesus homself dan ook as die een wat deur die hek kom en sy skape een vir een op hul naam roep. Daar is ‘n bekendheid in die gedeelte. Die skape herken die herder se stem, die hekwagter herken die herder, en moontlik die heel belangrikste, die herder ken die skape op hul naam, op elkeen se naam.

Vir die persone in Jesus se gehoor het die vertelling van Jesus ‘n agtergrond, ‘n gelaagdheid wat maklik by ons kan verby gaan. Jesus se nie net iets oor homself nie, maar se ook iets van die religieuse establishment van die dag. Dit is amper onmoontlik dat Esegiel 34 nie soos ‘n muur van water oor die annhoorders van die metafoor breek nie. Wanneer Jesus homself as die Goeie Herder voorhou staan dit teenoor diegene wat die kudde skade wil berokken. Esegiel 34, ook verse 1-10, stel dit soos volg:

Die woord van die Here het tot my gekom: ²“Mens, tree op as profeet teen die herders van Israel, tree op as profeet en sê vir hulle, vir die herders: So sê die Here my God: Ellende wag vir die herders van Israel wat net vir hulleself sorg! Moet herders dan nie vir die kleinvee sorg nie? ³Julle drink die melk, julle maak vir julle klere van die wol, julle slag die vetste kleinvee, maar julle sorg nie vir die kleinvee nie. ⁴Julle het nie die swakkes gehelp nie, julle het nie die siekes gedokter nie, julle het nie die wonde van dié wat seergekry het, versorg nie, julle het nie dié wat weggedwaal het, teruggebring nie, julle het nie dié wat weggeraak het, gesoek nie. Julle was harde en wrede regeerders. ⁵Die kleinvee was sonder herder en het verstrooi geraak, en toe hulle verstrooi raak, word hulle ’n prooi vir roofdiere. ⁶My kleinvee het rondgewaal oor al die berge en oor al die hoë heuwels, hulle het verstrooi geraak oor die hele aarde en niemand het hulle gesoek of na hulle gevra nie.” ⁷Daarom, herders, hoor die woord van die Here: ⁸“My kleinvee is uitgelewer en het die prooi van enige wilde dier geword; hulle is sonder herder, sonder iemand wat na hulle soek; die herders het vir hulleself gesorg en nie vir my kleinvee nie. So seker as Ek leef,” sê die Here my God, “Ek sal die herders straf.” ⁹Hoor die woord van die Here, herders! ¹⁰So sê die Here my God: “Ek gaan optree teen die herders: Ek eis my kleinvee van hulle terug, Ek maak ’n end daaraan dat hulle die kleinvee se herders is, hulle sal nie herders bly net om vir hulleself te sorg nie. Ek sal my kleinvee red en hulle nie deur die herders laat opeet nie.”

Die herder wat deur die hek kom, kom dus met ‘n seker ingesteltheid. Dit is ‘n herder wat meer besorg is oor die kudde as oor sy eie lewe, hy loop vooraan die kudde en wanneer die kudde bedreig word, plaas hy homself tussen die gevaar en sy skape. ‘n Eerste beskrywing van ‘n lewe van oorvloed is dus ‘n lewe waar Jesus intens betrokke is. Dit is ‘n lewe wat geleef word in die eerste plek vanuit en in die tweede plek  in respons op Sy roepstem, ‘n lewe in navolging van Christus. Die oorvloed word gevind in die omgee van die herder. Is dit moontlik om hierna te luister en nie die vertroosting en hoop van Lukas 4 vers 18 en 19 te hoor nie.

 ¹⁸“Die Gees van die Here is op My omdat Hy My gesalf het om die evangelie aan armes te verkondig. Hy het My gestuur om vrylating vir gevangenes uit te roep en herstel van gesig vir blindes, om onderdruktes in vryheid uit te stuur, ¹⁹om die genadejaar van die Here aan te kondig.”

 Nietemin, wat soos ‘n eenvoudige antwoord mag lyk, is in sekere opsigte onverstaanbaar. Altans, dit was vir diegene in Jesus se gehoor. Wat presies hulle nie verstaan het nie weet ons nie. Wat presies ons nie verstaan nie, is soms moeilik om te verwoord. Dalk is die rede hiervoor dat ons die uitspraak van Jesus op so baie verskillende maniere verkeerd verstaan of dalk omdat die ander stemme wat ook woorde soos oorvloed gebruik harder en met meer oortuiging gebruik.

In respons hierop brei Jesus die metafoor uit, of eerder zoom hy op een aspek van die vorige beeld in en brei daarop uit. In een van die minder bekende “Ek is”-uitsprake vergelyk Jesus homself met die ingang, die hek van die kraal. Net soos die eerste helfte van die metafoor verwys Jesus weer na die rowers en diewe, die keer almal wat voor hom gekom het. Dit is moontlik om die “almal” ook te verstaan in die lig van Esegiel 34. Almal is dus diegene wat Jesus voor afgegaan het, maar wat anders as hy, die volk mislei en uitgebuit het. In sommige opsigte is dit maklik om die gedeelte te verstaan in konteks van iets wat die skape moet doen, kies om deur die hek te gaan of nie. In lig van die metafoor vermoed ek egter wil Jesus uitbrei op iets wat hy reeds oor homself gese het, naamlik dat hy die herder is. Die gebruik van skaapwagters in die Ou Nabye Ooste was om skape te lei eerder as aan te jaag. Teen skemer se kant sou dit dus ‘n natuurlike gesig gewees het om te sien, ‘n herder wat self, met ‘n trop skape agter hom aan, tot binne die kraal stap. Sommige herders het die gewoonte gehad om self as hek te dien en in die gaping van die kraal te slaap. Op die manier het die skaapwagter dan ten alle tye geweet wat met sy skape aan die gebeur is, miskien ‘n bedreiging, siekte of geboorte. Die herder was altyd naby. Nie net ken hy sy skape op hul naam nie, maar elke minuut van sy dag word spandeer aan hul welsyn.  ‘n Lewe van oorvloed kan op die manier verstaan word as ‘n lewe waarvan elke oomblik deur Jesus ondervang word.

Met die paar gedagtes as agtergrond en met die wete dat God in Jesus hom met ons elkeen bemoei, is die vraag waarmee ons elkeen gekonfronteer word: herken ons nog die stem van ons herder? Wat se die manier en die plekke waar ons stap van die herder wat ons volg?

 Ons reis met die teks is nie klaar nie; God nooi ons uit om te bedaar, om stil te word en om in sy teenwoordigheid, by stille waters, te rus.

]]> http://langenhoven.wordpress.com/2011/05/16/preek-n-lewe-in-oorvloed-15-mei-2011/feed/ 1 hannol http://langenhoven.wordpress.com/2011/04/25/prayer-before-the-cross/ http://langenhoven.wordpress.com/2011/04/25/prayer-before-the-cross/#comments Mon, 25 Apr 2011 09:29:28 +0000 Hanno http://langenhoven.wordpress.com/?p=203 ]]> O great and glorious God,
Enlighten the darkness of my soul,
Give me true faith,
Firm hope,
Perfect love,
Profound humility,
Good sense and understanding,
So that I may follow
your holy and true commandment.
~
St Francis of Assisi