Day 24

Early in the morning while the rich are still asleep, the poor starts walking. They walk to the taxi ranks, to the train stations and to the corners of the main roads where the busses are waiting. They walk on the sidewalks like shadows in the mist. They are the ghosts just before daybreak, the invisible people the world ignore.

Until they stop.

Then the cheap labour and the high profit margins come to a sudden stand still. The houses of the rich turn into mansions of dust and dirt. The gardens and roads of the cities and the towns become a place for all the things the world throws out. When the poor stops walking, the world slows down.

Two millennia’s ago a Prophet spoke of a Way of Life that is good news to the poor.

In the meantime we built a society that exploits the poor, keep them invisible, and overwhelms them with systems to big to change so that in the end the poor will always die in poverty and despair.

Still the words of the Prophet echoes in eternity: If it’s not Good News for the poor, it’s not the Kingdom of God.

Day 23

Through my window I can see a young black artist busy painting.

Then, for a moment I thought I saw God:

A middle-aged white woman walked by, noticed his talent and offered some advice. She grew up in the apartheid years; he’s a child of the Rainbow Dream. They speak as if District Six never happened. As if no one died at Sharpeville, Nyanga and Langa. As if no barbwires ever separated black and white. As if we have forgiven the past and embraced the present. As if we have peace. As if we have love. As if we are one.

Jesus called this Kingdom Come. The ancient Christian writer Paul would have called this “church”. The people of Africa call this Ubuntu. I have no idea what to call it, but it leaves me with a feeling that everything is going to be all right.

Day 22

God is a black woman in labour.

God is a gardener planting herbs and aloes.

God is a tea lady cleaning up.

God is a child who’s lost.

God is a beggar standing in the traffic.

God is a maid who drinks out of a chipped coffee cup.

God is the man with the red flag on the side of the construction site.

God is a raped girl crying.

God is a HIV fetes.

God is the mother who carries the sick child inside of her.

God is a father who lost his firstborn.

God is the child soldier who holds the gun.

God is the prostitute who smells of cheap sex and cigarettes.

God is a prisoner waiting.

God is an old man dying.

God is a teenager in love.

God is a couple trying.

God is a community surviving.

God is a country growing.

God is Hope believing.

God is Love going on and on and on...

Day 21

My soul is like my garden. The weeds of stereotypes are all over the place. How easy I judge. Just when I thought I’ve pulled out racism with roots and all, it just grows back again. Life is tricky when you try to keep it organic.

Humphrey works in our garden. My first impression of him was not good. All the stuff my culture (wrongly) taught me about poor black South-Africans came to the surface the first time I saw him.

Then he got to work.

And all the labels disappeared.

And his true character broke through my prejudice.

Humphrey has green fingers. He is intelligent. He has a humble soul, but a proud posture. He is kind to my wife and good with our dogs. He is eager to work and up for any challenge relating to plants, compost, bone meal and big rocks.

I bet when it comes to everyday life, Humphrey and I, are brothers from different mothers. We have the same needs, longings and big picture prayers. Like the common weeds in my beddings,
the difference is only skin deep.

All I got to do is keep pulling the bastards out.

Day 20

I find myself going back to the compost heap every odd now and then. Digging in the pile of shit, looking for something, God knows what. Hoping that if I work it through, turning it inside out, I will speed up the decomposing process.

But that’s not how manure turns into compost. You have to let it be. Let Father Time and Mamma Nature do the work. You have to release control and rest in God’s good intent.

That’s the great thing about this time of year, the big lesson Life teaches us as the season changes. It reminds us that we have to slow down. Take it easy.

Relax.

Rest...

In a society where power and competence equals success and success equals money, our way of life quickly becomes our Way of Faith. Suddenly there is no room for error when it comes to God. No time to waste. No space for grace. If you want to get rid of something you chuck it out. If you want fertilizer, you buy it. You don’t waste your time waiting.

You "just do it".

But as the leafs rot and the smell of old forest floor settles underneath the compost heap in our back garden, I am encourage to the leave behind the fast lane of a success driven religiosity and travel the tricky road in search of a deeper understanding of Life.

Day 19

Spend the whole day trying to wrap my head around life.

Now I hope that Life will wrap itself around me.

Day 18

The story of the kingdom of God starts with God in a garden. First chaos, then creativity. First darkness, then light. First the raw material, then the artwork called Earth. First atoms, molecules and microbes, then life in all its abundant splendour. In the end God, The Green Fingers Master Artist looked at the garden and said: “Wow!”

But something’s missing: Humour, Laughter, Passion, Dreams, Emotions, Hope, Faith and Love.

Then God made us.

What a great story. I love how it’s told. It reads like a play, feels like a song and smells like the ground after the first summer rain. Some theologians believe that it was first told by a farmer.

I think they are right.

I spent the first half of my Saturday morning in the garden. Instead of fighting against the end of summer, I’m embracing the splendour of autumn. I am starting off with a new canvas. I am busy planning the artwork. I have a picture in my mind and autumn is the time to draw the almost invisible pencil lines. The depth will come in winter, the colours in spring and the joy of a finished piece of art will be the highlight of summer.

I’m moving on from the “box of junk” metaphor. I found it’s not helping.

All around the house were dead leafs. Usually we throw them away, but not this winter. I learnt a while ago that if you use them as mulch or leave them to rot into compost, your garden will bloom like Eden itself.

We have to let go. We have to let die. We have to let rot.

But it’s not junk, it’s just shit waiting to decompose into life giving compost.

Day 17

So far I threw out guilt, hell, fundamentalism and the need to have a handle on God. Today I am wrapping up the “race” as religious metaphor. In the Christian story, a writer named Paul used it to describe his spirituality and ever since Christians have been in competition with one another. (It is probably more complex than that, but for argument’s sake, let us keep it like that.)

“Who will be first?”

“Who will be last?”

“What will the prizes be?”

“Am I fast enough?”

“Fit enough?”

“I hope the others struggle or fall or trail behind.”

“God I hope I win.”

Is that really a healthy way of looking at spirituality? I can imagine that in Paul’s context it was revolutionary or at least helpful. But in a society where everything is about winning and no one ever sits still, because you might just get left behind, the race as metaphor is like fuel on the fire.

Eventually you end up with the “not good enough feeling”, because in life there is always someone faster, stronger, bigger and better. Your fall is detrimental. You can’t always win.

But religion doesn’t tell you this. Loosing is just not on. You have to win; otherwise you’ll get kicked out of the team. It’s as simple as that.

Then I look at the life and teachings of Jesus and somehow the race metaphor does not fit. When Jesus called people to follow him, he chose the losers of his day to be part of a countercultural movement where people found healing and restoration in the belief that they are loved by God “as is” and not as “supposed to be”. One day a few of his friends got into an argument of who is in the lead towards the finish. Jesus, overhearing the conversation, rebuked them and sent them back to the end of the line to learn about the art of unselfishness.

The kingdom of God, as Jesus spoke of it, is a journey where the way is just as important as the destination. Jesus came to give us life, not tire us out. Faith is not an effort to grab pole position towards the finish line.

We are called to walk together, carry each other and share life together.

Day 16

What if I end up with nothing? What if, after I’ve scraped through all the layers of religious bullshit I discover that the whole thing we call God is made up of layers and layers of collective longings that something greater than ourselves exist?

See the trouble I am in for letting God out?

While God is in your pocket, doubt is easy to handle, ‘cause every odd now and then you can feel God moves (probably trying to get out...), or make God move, it’s your decision.
But the moment you let God be God, the mystery kicks in, faith steps up and doubt changes into a whole different ball game.

Or maybe that's the real discovery. Underneath the layers there is indeed nothing. God is not waiting behind the curtains of religion.

Like Elvis, God has left the building, for good.

God moved on a long time ago.

The early followers of Jesus believed that the Big Curtain ripped in half the day Jesus died. A sign that religion could not keep God in. God does not live in houses and temples made by man.

Why then did we feel the need for more curtains between us and God if God is not going to wait behind them?

I’m starting to think that the journey is not taking out the junk. That’s just the preparation for a bigger adventure. After the trash is taken out, the real search begins.

Day 15

I have a need to box God. To give God a pronoun: Him or Her? To turn God into something tangible, describable, understandable. I have a need to know God as if God is a subject/object to be dissected and studied.

The ancient Hebrews had the same problem. While Moses was up on the mountain, they started to wander off. They needed something they can call God, something real that they can control. Something made in their image. So they made a Cow. (who says the Bible has no sense of humour?) . At least it was a fancy Cow, solid gold.

They worshiped it. They were ready to give their lives for it.

Meanwhile Moses is having a great time with God. Towards the end of the conversation, Moses communicates the same need as his friends down at the foot. He also wants to see God. Like we all do.

But then God shows him nothing but God’s backside. Some old Jews translated it to the “fresh footprints of God”.

That’s all he got, footprints.

We can’t take God home. We can’t carry God around. In the words of Rob Bell, “God is heavy”.

All that we can do is follow the direction in which the footprints are heading.

I have been dragging a Fat Cow around hoping it was God. No wonder I struggle. No wonder I am tired of religion. No wonder I feel disconnected with my True Self.

So today I am letting God out, but the Cow is heading straight for the box.

Day 14

I am confronted by my need to be right. It’s been part of my faith experience for so long. One of the first things that I was taught was that we are right and they are wrong. The world may have lots of questions, but we have in our possession the only right answer. That theology kick started a way of thinking for me. I did not want to engage with people different from me. I did want to hear about the arguments for a new way of thinking, because it might just confuse me.

I know it’s not just me. It’s part of the collective identity of so many religious people. I see it many times. We need to be right. That is how religion works.

It’s like a fortress: sturdy, solid and steadfast. It can’t be bent, move or give in without breaking. If you remove one brick, it weakens. If you remove a few others, the walls might come tumbling down. A fortress needs to be defended, protected, guarded and maintained. The idea is to keep foreign objects out. It is always tense, most of the times hostile and more often than not highly threatened. In a fortress mercy is weakness and power is safety. It is always looking for the best vantage point from where it can stand over and against things that are different. It cannot compromise, relax, flex, appreciate, accommodate, stretch or drop its guard at all. The moment it does that, it seizes to be a good fortress any longer.

That kind of faith just does not work for me anymore. (I hope there is still some space left in the box labelled “Junk”.)

This journey hopes to find better metaphors for faith, because life bends and God moves.

Like a Jumping Castle as a symbol for faith.

When faith moves from religion to relationship it tends to be more like a JC. If you watch children play in it you sometimes get the feeling that the castle is going to brake, but that’s when the jumping is at its best. The walls, corners and pillars are supposed to give in, they are made that way. If they don’t, then you are not jumping wild enough!

Jumping alone is fine for a while, but the best times are when the castle is bursting with kids going crazy.

There is also no competition, no technique, and no prize for the best jumper and no awards for the most back-flips in one jump.

It’s not about the castle, the ticket sales or whether you get the jumping part right or not.

It’s really just about getting your hair messy and your clothes wrinkled, in other words having a bag full of fun.

In the end the JC way of faith is guided only by two rules:

1. You always have to take of your shoes.
2. Don’t hurt the other kids.

Day 13

OK, let’s elaborate. Jesus came to bring life, before and after death. The revolution started with his friends claiming that, although they saw him die, he’s not dead after all. He broke the chains and set life free.

Never, not once did Jesus call us to believe in hell. The point is LIFE.

Hell is not about life; no it’s death all the way and God doesn’t do death.

Then why is there a need for Faith?

‘Cause this life is hell enough. People, from all walks of life go through it every day.

The kingdom of God is about the restoration and healing of this life as sign of hope that even in death, life will go on. The story of God as told in the Bible ends with heaven coming here.

So it is hell in some poverty stricken place, in some AIDS ridden family, in some corruption driven government, in some fear filled refugee camp, in some depressive, abusive relationship and in some painful story where death made its home. Why then bother with a theology of hell, when, what we really need is a theology of hope?

Day 12

I don’t believe in Hell. There, I said it. It’s off my chest and out of my system. Wrapped up and ready to meet its friend “Guilt” who’s already inside the box of junk.

This is a big confession.

For so long I believed that to follow Jesus means to believe in hell as place where the lost, the wretched and the damned go. That, so I thought is the starting place of faith. To believe in Jesus is to admit that you are lost and in dire need of some form of saving. If your time runs out before you came to this realization, well, then the Devil and the rest of gang will be waiting for you on the other side. Needless to say, it left me scared shitless.

But fear does not lead to faith. It only leads to superstition and forced religiosity.

Tonight, while grinding coffee beans, it came to me. I don’t believe in hell, because that’s not where I’m heading. It’s not part of my reality. My faith does not depend on the belief in the Devil or the Hell as place where sinners go when they die.

No, I choose life before death. The abundant kind Jesus spoke about. That is where I am going to start looking for God.

What a way to end the week. The box is getting heavy, I must admit. For a moment I thought of taking it out and putting it back, but then I thought: “To hell with it, I am throwing it out!”

Day 11

Still busy with the “throwing out” theme. Where do I start? What will the label on the first box of Christian kitsch be? How about “Guilt”?

Through the centuries the church perfected the art to turn guilt into faith, service, prayer and tithes. I used to feel guilty about almost every “do” and don’t” that I learnt in church. I should pray more, confess more, listen more, believe more and especially tithe more. I should sin less, doubt less and enjoy less.

Usually to great effect, guilt got me to do all those things.

Except love.

Love and guilt don’t sit around the same table. You cannot love out of a feeling of ought to or ought not to.

Out of guilt we can build houses, move mountains, feed thousands and pray like angels, but still it will amount to nothing.

Because love and guilt just don’t gel.

So I am wrapping up everything I have ever done, because I thought that that is what God expects from me. The list is long. It includes some big names such as The Bible, Prayer, Faith, Charity and Church.

No obligation, no expectation, just pure, honest, broken, vulnerable love.

“A box full of guilt”, sounds like something I should’ve chucked out a long time ago.

But here goes nothing...

Day 10

There is something sacred about autumn. Yesterday I took the dogs to a park. Hard to believe I was standing in the middle of Joburg city, patterns of red, yellow and orange all around. Here and there the first fingerprints of winter were visible.

Nature is shedding like a sheep dog, throwing off the stuff it gathered on her journey through spring and summer.

To throw stuff out is sometimes good. We need to travel light. Same applies to faith. During our walk with God we tend to gather junk. Before we know it we hold on to sentimental Christian kitsch that holds very little worth and meaning in the bigger scheme of things. In the end it drags us down, holds us back and makes our faith look tasteless, out of date and ugly as hell.

I can feel it in my bones, my soul is heading towards winter. To throw out, shake off, to rest, to gather new strength, go back to the roots, to allow my spirit to dig deep, to find an undercurrent of the Big Stream, to drink, to be revived, to wake up and start believing again.

Day 9

It is 20:05 and my wife is in the kitchen helping Angelica with her homework.

Like me, she also struggles with faith. Sometimes it feels as if we are walking the same path. The rest of the time we fight our own battle with religion. But right now, as she is teaching Angelica to speak Afrikaans and to understand Maths, I feel that something of God’s kingdom that Jesus used to speak of is real and alive in our home.

Angelica is not our child, neither a close nor distant relative.

Her mom cleans our house.

I know it sounds patronizing, but the effort she puts in and the passion that accompanies it, is the closest I can get to a picture of “kingdom come”. She doesn’t need to do it, but if she doesn’t then Angelica will not see her dream of becoming a doctor come true.

And this is where her struggle with religion ends and her journey with Jesus starts. Where religion survives by telling people they are bad unless God saves them , the Way of Jesus calls people from humble identities to take a walk in the direction of mercy, hope, justice and love.

You don’t need a Bible to do this. You don’t need a big church for this journey. You don’t need the next big preacher to show you the Way. The first followers had nothing of this, but their impact on the world as we know it is still echoing through the corridors of history. They grew from 12 to 20 million in 300 years. People got hooked on the countercultural way of living an everyday ordinary life of Love.

If you have a little bit of hope, if you made a small change towards giving, if you've decided to give forgiveness a chance, if you are feeling a slight discomfort with the state the earth is in and if you are pondering to live a life of substance and meaning, chances are you’re already walking it.

Day 8

Still busy with sin and hell. Back in school I was that kid that irritated the living daylights out of people with my overzealous efforts to preach the “turn of burn” gospel. My brother was different. He hated Sunday morning church. He never read his Bible. He partied, smoke and drank. He was the anti-Christian type.

Every odd now and then I would let him know what I thought of his way of life.

No wonder we weren’t close.

Mean while I started to see through the system. I got hooked on the Way of Jesus. I was ready to love my brother without trying to change him.

Then he died, suddenly.

Accident at work.

At his funeral, one of his housemates (with the same lifestyle as my brother) gave a testimony.

“Pieter was the closest to Jesus than anyone I ever knew.” was his words.

It left me cold.

My religiosity blinded me. While I thought I knew God through a so called holy lifestyle, obeying
all the rules, God was right there all along in the life of my brother, waiting for me to acknowledge this simple truth.

His friends, who never went to church, who did all the stuff that church taught me not to do and who never did the other stuff I thought I was supposed to do when it come to the stuff of God, saw God in my brother.

And I did not.

Damn irony.

Day 7

The whole day I have been thinking about a conversation I had last night. Why do we believe that we are bad and sinful? Why do we keep telling ourselves that our true nature is to rebel against God? I have been hearing this from the start of my faith story. It’s been around for ages, this theology of humans being up to no good.

I just don’t buy it anymore.

What if the first words you heard as a kid about your relationship with God were positive, hopeful and validating? What if you never heard of hell, sin, the Law and punishment? What if your first understanding of your identity as a human being was that you were created by God, almost like God, loaded with godly possibilities and that this identity will never change?

Sounds like Good News to me.

Day 6

I have a friend in Cape Town that likes to speak about God as a "moving target". Sounds funny, I know. But there is something to it. God being on the move. You can't pin God down.

Just like the Lion in Narnia, wild and free. Always coming and going.

Or like traffic, but without the stress. It’s weird to think of God in that way. Somehow it just doesn't fit. Usually God is stationed somewhere, like in a church, on a mountain or up in heaven.

But maybe not, maybe God is right there where you are, a step or two in front, but still close enough to see the fresh footprints in the sand.

Day 5

Late Sunday night. I‘m still chewing on the words of the Wandering Rabbi: “Sell everything and follow me. Let go of all the stuff, lighten your load and come take a walk.”

How far removed from the spirituality of the Real Jesus do we find ourselves? The story of the Good News Journalists that travel the Known World telling stories of Faith, Hope and Love quickly evolved into an institute that crusades around in search of power and wealth. Somewhere else it became a club of elite members constantly judging people to be in or out. Somewhere it started as a great Idea, but got dragged behind by hidden agendas and selfish ideals.

I can go on like this for quite a while.

But somewhere someone sold her stuff and followed. Somewhere someone broke the chains and started to run. Somewhere someone lost his religion and found God. Somewhere someone is still on that journey.

What I would give to be that someone...

Day 4

Weekend blues and family dinners. Spend a day in the Cape travelling between parents. Instead of taking it easy to enjoy an awesome day in one of the most beautiful places in the world, we felt rushed and agitated. How easy it is to miss out on life. You run around trying to please everyone. You fall back into old patterns. You quickly become someone you’re not. Or are? Or were? I’m not sure, but man, I hate that guy.

Life beckons.

Love calls.

But something suffocates the goodness out of me and I end up grumpy and irritated.

I have been here before. I have felt like this more than once. I know how to get out of this itching skin.

I choose.

It takes a heap full of energy, a whole lot of soul and bag full of character. But in the end I pull through.

So in my search for God, maybe God is in that conscious decision to change my attitude. When I fight back the shadow and let the Light in; when I take a long shower, a deep breath and a cold glass of water; when I force that smile until it comes from a place of honesty and when I start loving through the irritation, God shows up, or showed up. I’m not sure...

Day 3

06h43, Johannesburg, OR Tambo Airport. Planes all around, ours delayed, fog on the runway. Airports are one of my favourite places to be. The expectancy of an adventure, the life on the move, the privilege of being a pilgrim, it’s all part of the energy between departures and arrivals.
My wife and I took our dogs, the Land Rover and a few essentials on a journey to the Drakensberg Mountains. On our way to our destination we took the fastest possible route. Tar roads all the way, a smooth ride filled with convenience, safety and all things familiar. On our way back we changed the settings of the GPS to dirt roads and detours. We took the road less travelled, the routes on the map marked as “not recommended” and “slippery when wet”. The ride was bumpy, dusty and dirty. The roads were empty and scary. But what an adventure! It took us along the flow of the rivers of the mountain; it showed where the autumn gets its colours from and where the winter gathers the cold. We drove through villages that do not exist and over bridges that still have to be built. The first road was big and wide and easy to drive. The latter was steep and narrow and tough to drive. The one was a no brainer, just a means to an end. The other, a journey that shapes your soul, prepares your heart and bids you fair well with the gift of awe and wonder.

Somewhere someone wrote that being a believer is to be a pilgrim, a stranger on a journey. Jesus’ invitation to his friend was not to commit, subscribe, join or belong, but to follow. It’s a call to take the scenic route, to travel off the beaten track, to get going.

To follow Jesus is to see faith as fluid, hope as change and love as the detour in to the mysteries of life.

Day 2

Outside the thunder is rolling, the winds are picking up speed and the clouds have turned everything gray. On days like this in ancient times, people believed that the gods are angry. Today we know better. Today we know that this is part of nature, no one is angry. It is just life going through growing pains.

But still we pray as if God is angry. Our prayers are filled with words of penitence, “I am so sorry” “Have mercy” “Please God forgive my sins”. Day in and day out, we plead and moan and cry. We go to church, synagogue, temple and mosque. We tithe and fast, confess and commit. We hope that we are wrong and fear that we are right, because somewhere deep in our souls the wounds of ancient superstitions are still sore, still oozing with toxic religiosity.

Somewhere in my struggle to submit to the demands of my religion I have lost Life. That’s what religion does, it sucks life out you. Instead of standing in awe of the thunder and the lightning, we run into our temples and pray to the gods for mercy.

The words from R.E.M’s “Losing my Religion” have been in my head the whole day. I got to let go of the fear. I got to let go of the superstition. To much guilt, I need a breath of Fresh Air.

It’s time to open the shutters.

It’s time to show religion the door.

It’s time to let Life in.

Day 1

Faith doesn't come easy, not to me anyway. Spend a whole day trying to pray the other day, got stuck. Spend the rest of the week ignoring God, or is it the other way around?

Someone gave me great advice, he said my problem lies with the god in my head. That god never existed. Just something I created to feel good about myself. Or something I inherited from my parents and they from theirs. Generations down the line and we sing and pray and hope and believe in something that does not exist, or that is just a crumb of the Big Loaf of bread we call God.

So now the journey starts. Away with all the baggage, with all the stuff that I used to think of as God. Away with all the cheap answers from people claiming to know everything there is to know about this amazing Mystery. Away with the commercial gospel that photo shops life and all its complexities.

I am looking for the Real Makoya, the Big Loaf.

Are You out there?