This is the view from the chapel at Mariya uMama weThemba – it makes going to church rather a joy…

Many chapels and churches feature beautiful stained glass windows and I must say I am generally a fan of good stained glass. But our chapel here in South Africa features great picture windows and you can see why.

The thing with a stained glass window is you look at the window, not what is on the other side. They are a window, but also a wall. Clear windows let the world, to a degree, in. On the very windy and rainy days I am grateful that it is only to a degree.

While I love stained glass, there is a danger to the church (or any religious institution) in being blinded to the world. You can not encounter much Christian tradition without being confronted with what is clinically referred to as “the preferential option for the poor.” The clinical nature of that term obfuscates its meaning – Jesus had far more interest and involvement with poor people and seems to have had little patience for “the right sort” of people.

When we are on one side of the stained glass, its easy to feel good about those whom our society rejects because we can’t see them… But as we distance ourselves from the margins of society, we distance ourselves from Jesus as well. Feeling good is not a good thing in a world filled with injustice. Feeling joy, on the other hand, even in a world of injustice and sorrow, is a very good thing.

It is certainly possible to sit in the chapel here and be cocooned in a different sort of beauty than stained glass would provide – but cocooned nonetheless. At the same time, I have seen brush fires working their way up the valley – inching closer and closer to the chapel… all that beauty can also be quite threatening. That can help take away the sweet, sentimental cocoon of beauty.

But today at the Eucharist the second grade students from our school joined us (often on Tuesdays, one of the classes comes to church). They were as you might expect seven-year-olds to be. They sort of jumbled in at the last minute. Since it is winter here, there were a few runny noses. Their ability to sit through the service was commendable, but some of the nuance of Anglican (Episcopal) liturgy was observed more in breach. In other words they were marvelous. While I may have been a little challenged, Jesus surely loved it. These kids are among the great many poor in South Africa. Jesus was utterly at home. And by the end of the service, when I had worked through a bit of my own stuff, I was getting to be a bit more at home.

That is the journey – coming home to who God makes us to be. I’ll let you know when I get there…

Week two begins – it is hard to believe that just last Monday I was waking up from long travels and such. The speed of travel makes it hard to grasp that one has traveled a long distance. I do notice that it takes time to adjust to things like time zone changes and climate changes. But I’m feeling a bit settled by now.

This is a view of the monastery. It is a strange building to photograph because its on a hillside and the “front” faces down hill. So from the uphill side one gets uninteresting pictures of roofs… from downhill it is hard to get perspective without going “over the hill” as it were. But you see on the right side the lovely common room with its great bow of windows. A sunny room filled with light.

Of course I still read the news from the US and it is quite distressing. The willingness of politicians to say things that I don’t believe they can believe is disheartening. The political situation in South Africa is fragile at best – but I have the sense that here things are trending better. This is a young democracy that started in incredible hopefulness led by great leaders like Nelson Mandela. Sadly, I think George Orwell could have written the script that came after Mandela – in fact I think he did… But now perhaps a new script is coming into play.

In the US however, a script based on Orwell’s 1984 seems to be in use – where words don’t have set meanings and facts are transient. Without something changing its hard to imagine how the US moves forward. For South Africa forward options are abundant, but all involve spending and the government, at various levels, has little money (and much of that is poorly spent).

Climate change is the big cloud, not too be too clever, hanging over things. Drought is still a big deal in South Africa and, as in Southern California, it seems more likely that it is becoming the “normal” condition. That means that adequate amounts of safe water will become terrifically expensive. Its clear that too much of the world depends on the US for leadership. And for the time being, the US is failing at that.

I keep asking myself as a person of faith what should I think and do? We are not called to live in fear and worry – in fact those are things we are specifically called not to live in. But at the same time we are not called to live in fantasy that somehow God will intervene and fix whatever bad things we face. The temptation is to look at the scale of problems and simply resign – its too big, we can’t fix it, lets just ride along… And I can’t see that as the plan Jesus would choose.

I don’t have any big answers, but I think that is the point. The answers are small. We make peace where we can. We live in harmony with the rest of creation where we can. We build relationships with our brothers and sisters where we can.

And we keep a dream alive of what this world could become – a place, as Martin Luther King described – where all God’s children can play together.

The problem with dreams is you have to have both the dream and nightmare in view – they don’t separate. And if you take one without the other you leave reality and enter fantasy. So my dystopian view of the political world is good and healthy as long as it is joined by a Utopian view to balance.

Anyway – enough rambling… I’m on to utterly mundane Monday things… hanging wash out to dry and then perhaps a trip into town… life is good.

I have recently moved from upstate New York to the Eastern Cape of South Africa – more or less the other side of the planet. So I’ve gone from the dead of summer to the dead of winter. Of course summer in upstate this year has been quite extreme – hot, humid, not my favorite thing. But mid-Winter South African style is a rather mild experience – kind of like Summer in Scotland…

I have come to a time of life where, as a good friend puts it, I have time for one more big adventure. And I’m hoping that this is the start of that… Its a bit hard to predict with any certainty what will happen, but I am hoping for an adventure. And I’m sure I’ll have one – the question is will it be the adventure I want?

Of course it is a long and tiring journey from New York to South Africa. There is a daily direct flight from JFK to Johannesburg which just requires a lot of patience and willingness to sit for hour after hour. But in days of yore it would have been days, if not weeks, on a ship, so 15 hours of flying I’ll take.

For now I am still getting settled. And trying to live in the moment. And trying not to miss Sr Mouse, the darling cat, too much.

The picture at the top of this is the approach to the chapel here. It is a beautiful space in a marvelous spot with an extravagant view of a long, desolate-looking valley. But this walk way is a bit treacherous, especially early in the morning before the sun is up.

More pictures and more thoughts in a while.

Scott

Thanks for joining me!

Good company in a journey makes the way seem shorter. — Izaak Walton