The Face Of God

God used to smell of incense. He was ritual and the silence of the church. He was song as the choir burst into song and a thousand students stood as the priests made their way to the altar. He was light and darkness, beauty and golden chandeliers, He was there and not there. The three priests would turn to face us. "The Lord be with you", they would say. "And also with you", we would answer. And also with you.

The chapel at my high school, St Columba's Anglican High School, Bulawayo, Zimbabwe

God was my face the day the Headmaster made me stand up in front of the students. I used to like to sit in the very front row of the church, all the better to hear the music and watch the rituals unfold in front of me. The breaking of the host and its mysterious transformation into the sacrifice. The pouring of the blood red wine into the silver grail as the choir exploded into song, Igama lenkosi malibongwe. The girls soprano dancing above the rumbling of the boys tenors and bass. I would march up the red carpet and take my seat and watch in wonder and awe, sad that I could not take part in any the communion because I was a Lutheran and not an Anglican.

Usually I would leave unmolested but that day the Headmaster, who was also one of the Head Priests was bellowing through his sermon then suddenly he waved, "you are all made in the image of God. All of you. Love one another because God is in each one of you. You have the Face of God". He looked around and let the words sink in, then he grabbed me by the arm as he gestured for my terrified self to stand up and face a thousand students. "In fact, even this small boy, look at his face. If you ask yourself what God looks like, he probably looks like this." The teasing endured for months. 

Njube Lutheran Church where I was baptised at eight months (c) Agneta Jürisoo and Mats Lagergren,

God was harsher and more stringent at our humbler church whose domes made it look more of a cross between a mosque and a museum. The wall was covered in white plaster that rubbed off on your clothes if you leaned against it and the louvred windows reached almost up to the top of the building letting light stream in throughout the service. Here God was simpler, no incense and no golden chandeliers, the candlesticks were made of simple metal painted black and the flowers picked from the garden outside. No high tech public address system nor red carpet. But He was louder, harsher, more demanding. He was the voice of the pastor whose robes would flail from behind the lectern as he warned us all of the consequences of sin, of the dangers of death, of the evils of the world. My heart beat in wariness of the sins I knew I had committed and in mortal dread of the sins I didn't know I had committed and in absolute horror at the sins I might commit. 

God was mystery at my A-Level school. His words had turned from Shona and Ndebele to Latin as five hundred boys repeated after the brothers. Kyrie elysion, Christe elysion, Kyrie elysion. He was wrapped once again in incense but this incense formed thicker clouds around him with words of dogma, of history and traditions and messages from a Pope, (or to use his formal title: His Holiness, Bishop of Rome, Vicar of Jesus Christ, Successor of the Prince of the Apostles, Supreme Pontiff of the Universal Church, Primate of Italy, Archbishop and Metropolitan of the Roman Province, Sovereign of the Vatican City State, Servant of the servants of God.) in the Vatican, thousands of miles away who spoke on His behalf and whose spirt we regularly prayed for. God's mother, Mary, was suddenly everywhere and she was prayed to. Prayed to for her mercy and intercession so she could speak to this mysterious God on our behalf. He was incredible wealth as the brothers spoke of the many other schools like ours around the world but he was also service in action for the poor and oppressed in the world.

The Pietà Madonna by Michelangelo in St Peter's Basilica, The Vatican

But in an instant God became nonsense in Algeria. Suddenly the privilege from living in a 99% majority Christian country disappeared like the morning dew when I found myself in a 99.8% majority Muslim country surrounded by a fraction of the almost two billion Muslims around the world. God was hidden Bibles on our way to church, covered crucifixes around our necks, was a thousand inquisitive questions, some friendly, others harsh where suddenly a lot of 'simple' things became extremely difficult to explain.

"So you have three God's n'est pas?" "No, we have one God". "But you just told me that Jesus and this Holy Spirit person are also God no?" "Yes, yes but they are one." "You literally don't make any sense at all you know that, plus you said God died on a cross!" Latin words and dogma lying in a library somewhere in the Vatican somehow started feeling less comforting. "So this Bible of yours has many versions but some versions are the true one and the one you follow is one of the true ones but not some of the other ones whom you call cults....who gets to decide heh? You know the Koran only has one version?"

Anger and frustration would rise, but also questions that led down paths that sometimes had no answers. Like the time when I was a child and I had piped up during a Bible study session; but if God was really so good why did he put the Apple tree smack bang in the middle of the garden? My question hung in the air like an unexploded bomb until someone told me not ask such silly questions. Perhaps God's answers were in the mosque I attended with my friends several times but the flood of Arabic only raised more mysteries. Perhaps God was only in Zimbabwe and this was indeed a people doomed to fate. Perhaps he was in the Vatican whispering answers to the Pope. Perhaps he was in the streets with the prophets who screamed fire and damnation was nigh to anyone who was not in their denomination of Christianity, one of 38, 000 worldwide. What did I know? Nothing.

I looked at my Algerian, Muslim friend, his face screwed up in confusion at the crawling mass of my stories of this God of ours against the injunction of his Allah. And then I heard Mr Moyo's rumble of a voice from that incense filled building, Your friend has the face of God.

Love him. 

Pharisees: Why Christians are sometimes so unChristian

Dear Readers, compliments of the New Year to you all and my apologies for my extended absence. I hope I was sincerely missed. Anyway I write this blog from Zimbabwe, which is also true for the previous blog – There is a Sadness, because today I met what I would like to call a Pharisee.

I will not name names, or point fingers but today I happened to be having lunch with one of my dear friends who happens to be a non-believer. He says that his mind cannot perform the leap of faith necessary to fathom the supposed existence of a God or gods. I remember when I met him two years ago, I nodded sagely and told him that I found his point of view interesting. Having lived in Algeria for four years, there is one thing I had learnt above all else, to appreciate and respect those who hold opinions different to mine. Our friendship, marked as it is by that fundamental difference is one of the few I hold dear.

We were joined by two ladies who are firm believers, of the Pentecostal persuasion. And then my cousin, who rounded up the quintet, happened to mention to the two ladies that my friend was an atheist. Dearest reader, it is not often that I almost choke on my food but today I was caught off guard and the muscles of my throat wrapped in panic on the chicken fillet I was swallowing at the time.

“I am scared of people like you”.                

“You people can do anything - you might even murder someone or rape me” .

“Hanging around people like you is going to corrupt me”.

I am glad to say my friend took it in his stride and gamely soldiered through what was a very awkward moment coloured by what constituted hate speech. 

To what must be the eternal shame of every Christian out there, he quoted quite correctly and simply: “Judge not lest you shall be judged.” Her ambiguous equation of morality to religion, the complete disregard of the opinion of the other, the assumption, basic and unassuming, that she was right so everyone else by extension must be wrong; the callous disregard of the life story that this other individual had experienced, the views and opinions that he held sacrosanct, his own belief systems; they were all thrown under the truck by the adherent of a religion that claims to be a religion of acceptance and ‘non-judgementalism.’ Hypocrisy.

And it’s sad that it is a stance that is shared by so many people around the world. So many of the failures to live together in peace and harmony in this world caused by an utter and complete failure to try to comprehend that there is someone out there who holds a belief different to yours. A few days ago as we read about the bombings of a church in Nigeria, a friend of mine felt the need to weigh in with a gem of his wisdom:

‘I hate Muslims, they are always busy killing people, they must be stopped’

I sharply pointed out that not only did the Prophet Mohammed emphasise that Muslims must live together in peace with Christians, that the Koran also described the ‘people of the book’ (Christians and Jews) as children of God who must not be harmed but that far more Muslims than Christians are killed each year by Muslim Fundamentalists and a blanketing of an entire people within the mutually abhorrent acts of a few was as contemptible as Hitler’s Nazism.

Many of my friends know that I am a sharp critic and I have also come to learn that it is easy to criticize and destroy but far more difficult to criticize and build. Let me attempt to build – here is what I think should have happened. On learning of a person who held a belief different to hers, she should have asked and understood why. Perhaps give time even learnt what caused my friend to see the world in the way he chooses to. If she so wished she could have stated her own views on belief and how it coloured her life, and then in the style of a true lady, agreed to disagree.

Because whether you like to believe it or not, your entire life’s experiences, thoughts and opinions fail to comprehend the vast vista of human existence. You have never stepped onto the steps of a temple dedicated to the snake god in Delhi, nor walked through the shadowed beauty of a mosque nor quite understood why the Japanese believe their emperor to be divine. I can hardly be expected to understand why people who are different to me act in the way that they do, but I believe it is my duty to allow them the space to do so in just the same way they allow me my space to carve out my own little corner of existence in this universe that we share.

“I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.”
-Voltaire

Maktub: A glimmer in the dark

At the risk of my blog turning into a book review, which is not at all what it is, I give you my second review of a book I recently read. Maktub by Paulo Coelho, a world famous Brazilian author, who by some strange twist of fate found himself on my reading list this week. The only way I can give you a taste of the beauty of his tome is by quoting, quite generously from it and interspersing with my own musings:

The text is adapted from a poem by John Muir: “I want to free my soul so that it can enjoy all of the gifts that the spirits own. When this is possible, I will not try to know the craters of the moon, nor track the rays of the sun to their source. I will not try to understand the beauty of a star, nor the artificial desolation of a human being. “When I learn how to free my soul, I will follow the dawn, and to return with it through time. When I learn how to free my soul, I will plunge into the magnetic currents that drain into an ocean where all waters meet to form the Soul of the World. “When I learn how to free my soul, I will try to read the splendid page of Creation from the beginning.”

Beautiful words no? They fill one with hope and inspiration but how do you get from admiring them to actually wanting so much to live them that they became your life anthem? There are times when one lives them I suppose, brief moments of illuminated joy; but so often our lives are overtaken by the ordinariness of the day. Swept up into the life that we see with our eyes and not the ones our hearts sometimes catch brief glimpses of. ‘Maktub’ is a beautiful book, it is not a novel in the normal sense of the word, it is just a book filled with wise sayings and teachings, bits and snatches of wisdom. Some of them leave you feeling high, some of them question the fundamental assumptions one makes about life. How about this one?

Humanity has committed some of its worst crimes in the name of the truth. Men and women have been burned at the stake. The entire culture of some civilizations has been destroyed. Those who committed the sin of eating meat were kept at a distance. Those who sought a different path were ostracized. One person, in the name of truth, was crucified. But -before He died -He left us a great definition of the Truth. It is not what provides us with certitudes. It is not what makes us better than others. It is not what we keep within the prison of our preconceived ideas. The Truth is what makes us free. “Know the Truth, and the truth will make thee free,” He said.

I love that part; “It is not what provides us with certitudes. It is not what makes us better than others”. Tell that to the Pentecostal pastor as he looks down his nose at the Catholics. Tell that to the Catholic Father as he pronounces damnation on the Muslims. Tell that to the Muslims as they call the Hindu an infidel. Our world is filled with so much pain, why is it that people seem so dead set on increasing it? On adding to it in the name of truth. Of standing on their side of the river and declaring that the world looks the way it does to them to everyone on the planet, instead of trying to swim to the other side and discovering what vistas await them. I have so many Muslim and Hindi friends, and their faith is one filled with beauty and discipline, that passage spoke to me as a ‘Christian’. Only my closest friends will understand why I put the term in quotes: I carry no more pride in that label, and Maktub talks once more of pride:

“A hermit fasted for an entire year, eating only once a week. After this sacrifice, he asked that God reveal to him the true meaning of a certain passage in the Bible. No response was heard. “What a waste of time,” the hermit said to himself. “I gave up so much, and God didn't even answer! Better to leave these parts and find a monk who knows the meaning of the verse.” At that moment, an angel appeared. “The twelve months of fasting served only to make you believe that you were better than others, and God does not answer a vain person,” the angel said. “But when you were humble, and sought help from others, God sent me.” And the angel explained what he wanted to know.

But some of the other sayings are practical, they deal with the ordinariness of life, the lessons that we meet in the everyday course of our sojourn on this side of death, take this one about counting your blessings:

We are often incapable of understanding the blessings we have received… There is a story about a pelican who -during a hard winter -sacrificed herself by providing her own flesh to her children. When she finally died of weakness, one of the nestlings said to another: 'Finally! I was getting tired of eating the same old thing every day. '”

I am a prime example of that one, I always seek more, even when I have so much. My imagination at times is a blessing, but also a curse because I tend to imagine perfection and inevitably get disappointed when I hold life up to my images and it fails to compare. ‘Maktub’ speaks of the supernatural as well as the ordinary, he attempts to look into the heart of Eve as she ate the forbidden fruit and even Peter and Judas at the last supper:

At the Last Supper, Jesus accused -with the same gravity and using the same phrase -two of his apostles. Both had committed the crimes foreseen by Jesus. Judas Iscariot recovered his senses and condemned himself. Peter also recovered his senses, after denying three times everything he had believed in. But at the decisive moment, Peter understood the true meaning of Jesus' message. He asked forgiveness and went on, humiliated. He could have chosen suicide, but instead he faced the other apostles and must have said: “Okay, speak of my error for as long as the human race exists. But let me correct it.” Peter understood that Love forgives. Judas understood nothing.

Life is not simple. When it is described by the pen, written in the texts of the history books, it seems simple but it never is. The great heroes must have hardly felt as heroes, they were men. The great decisions that changed the course of human history were not that, they were just decisions. It is only afterwards, when the sands of time have cleared away the hubris of living that everything seems clear. There is power in the word, but that is also its great danger.

Of all the powerful arms of destruction that man has been able to invent, the most terrible -and most cowardly -is the word. Fists and firearms at least leave some blood remaining. Bombs destroy houses and streets. Poisons can be detected. The master says: “The word can destroy without leaving a clue. Children are conditioned for years by their parents, men are impiously criticized, women are systematically massacred by the words of their husbands. The faithful are kept far away from religion by those who regard themselves as the interpreters of the voice of God. Verify whether you are making use of this weapon. See whether others are using this weapon on you. And prevent either of those from continuing.”

I leave you with a quote that had me laughing out loud at 2am. Life is never as simple as it seems.

There is an old Peruvian legend that tells of a city where everyone was happy. Its inhabitants did as they pleased, and got along well with each other. Except for the mayor, who was sad because he had nothing to govern. The jail was empty, the court was never used, and the notary office produced nothing, because a man's word was worth more than the paper it was written on. One day, the mayor called in some workmen from a distant place to build an enclosure at the center of the village's main square. For a week, the sound of hammers and saws could be heard. At the end of the week, the mayor invited everyone in the village to the inauguration. With great solemnity, the fence boards were removed and there could be seen... a gallows. The people asked each other what the gallows was doing there. In fear, they began to use the court to resolve anything that before had been settled by mutual agreement. They went to the notary office to register documents that recorded what before had simply been a man's word. And they began to pay attention to what the mayor said, fearing the law. The legend says that the gallows never was used. But its presence changed everything.

Click here to download a copy of Maktub and give me your comments on it.
(Paulo Coelho is a proud supporter of P2P sharing, seriously I am not making this up, check out his Wikipedia page)

Even Angels Fall

Before you read this entry, take the time to watch this advert which was recently banned by the Advertising Standards Authority.




The sky is falling cried Chicken Little and all the animals in the tale were swept into mass hysteria. A few weeks ago the Advertising Standards Authority Declared the same thing; the heavens are falling and an advert was banned to prevent this imminent Armageddon.

In case you have not been up to date with all the hullabaloo, which in itself testifies to your extreme luck, Axe released an ad which featured female angels falling from heaven seemingly unable to resist the charms of a man who had sprayed a new brand of Axe deodorant. A South African viewer complained that the ad featured angels behaving in a manner incompatible with his belief, ASA ruled in his favour, stating:

The problem is not so much that angels are used in the commercial, but rather that the angels are seen to forfeit, or perhaps forego their heavenly status for mortal desires…

And that was that. Or should have been that except that I took the time to watch the advert on Youtube (along with five hundred thousand other curious people) and the first thought that came to my mind was Chicken Little.

You see, there is a slight problem with the ruling given by the ASA, besides the lack of humour on their part. There is the ever slight issue that the Bible documents in detail: angels have fallen from heaven before. The beginning of Genesis chapter 6 describes angels who not only were enamoured by the beauty of the daughters of Eve, that not only did they fall from heaven, they beget children who became giants. I dare the ASA to take the issue to the Vatican and get them to remove the offending passages for being incompatible with ‘Christian’ belief. And lest we forget Lucifer, that most famous of retrenched angels, fell from heaven to earth.

And that is exactly where my problem lies, this temptation to fall into the trap of labelling every little thing in the world as good or bad, black or white, safe for work or not safe for work, ANC or DA, us or them. Two little neat categories into which we like to squeeze the world as if it fits. Osama Bin Laden was Muslim therefore Muslims are bad and must be stopped and searched at airports. Whites once colonised Africa so they must all be bad. Christianity is good therefore it is all good. This is not only an inaccurate, simplistic, small minded view but a dangerous one as well. Intolerance has roots in a lack of understanding, in a failure to appreciate the view of the other, to refuse to leave the confines of one’s comfort zone, to label every “other” as bad.

It is a dangerous mind-set that fails to appreciate the complexity, the variety, the sheer stunning range of human beings. That fails to appreciate that the everyday is rooted both in the simple and the complex, that fails to reach out to the ‘other’ and prefers to sit, solidly rooted in its ignorance, refusing to accept that even angels can fall, that the portrait of the world we choose to see is often not the whole story.