eco-theology and a liturgy of life

After a great conversation earlier today with one of the student pastors around the University of Pretoria (not Dutch Reformed), I starting thinking about the small practical sides of living eco-friendly again. How do we bring it down to earth, so to speak. Out of the big atmospheric questions (not that those are not important), into the daily actions of living. And doing it eco-friendly. And keeping it practical. And since we talk about theology mostly on this blog (although the non-religious should also be able to identify with much of these thoughts), making it a spiritual thing, a faith thing, a theology thing… eco-theology. And since we recognize that there is this huge crisis we need to respond to, and we have this tradition of liturgy in the church, of participating in actions which point to a greater reality, and form us with this greater reality in mind, let’s talk about liturgy. But hopefully most of us have realized by now that we are not primarily formed by what happens Sunday morning in church, but by what happens day-after-day in life. So I’ll talk about a liturgy of life. eco-theology and a liturgy of life.

Two short suggestions:

1. I’ve mentioned a few short thoughts on food and theology in the past. Food is a great liturgical act. For better or for worse. I can go about weekly to pick up the trash in the different streams around Pretoria, and really, we should spend more time picking up trash, but it can easily remain external to my being, something I do from time to time to feel that I’ve done something eco-friendly. But change your diet, and you change a pattern, a rhythm, a way of life. This is true for changing your diet in many ways. I would suggest that the food we eat can become a primary part of an eco-theology liturgy of life. Food has been central to spirituality since like forever. Fasting. Feasting. Eucharist. Eat only what you need, not more. Eat only the amount of meat that you need, not more. Eat with others, don’t prepare for only one person.
2. Travel the speed of God, the speed of the people. Many have written about slowing down as an act of spirituality, as finding God in a slower way of life. I’ve mentioned becoming part of my own context more through public transport. For many of us the reality is that we travel faster and more than the average person. We rush around in our own car to get from point A to point B as fast as possible, using way more energy than the average person, and missing the place where most people are. And if we take the incarnation seriously, we’d have to say that this is where we’d find God as well. Part of our eco-friendly liturgy of life I’d suggest could be, travel more with others. And the reality is that if I change the way I do my daily travels, I change my whole way of life! No longer in charge of everything, not longer always able to be where I want to be when I want to be, but part of a greater system. Interconnected with the whole society through my travels. Liturgically reminding my day by day of the realities of average life.

Thanx to the community in which I live, there commitment to the environment, and willingness to think through actions, in the first I’ve had the privilege of dwelling into. And 18 months down the line, I find myself constantly reminded of the reality of economic and ecological injustice every time I find myself in a place where people just never think about food. The second still lies there waiting for me every time I drive past the taxi rank close to my house.

I’ll just be that other white African, an Afrikaner

This reflection flows from the debate on Antjie Krog’s Begging to be Black, organized by the Centre for Public Theology at the University of Pretoria, in which Jurie le Roux, Klippies Kritzenger and Rodney Chaka participated. Tom Smith wrote a brilliant critical overview of the debate, which I’m not even going to try and repeat. However, I’ve been journeying with my own being Afrikaner since July last year, and would like to continue this journey with reference to the current conversation.

The responses at the above mentioned debate again made me realize how much more thorough I still need to think about my own being, my own Afrikanernes. The detailed and critical analyses of Krog’s book, pointing out some of her own indebtedness to being an Afrikaner, as well as some naiveties in her approach forced me to think about by own almost naively positive reaction to Krog’s work.

One thing I think we have almost consensus about. Krog’s use of Black wasn’t the best choice of words. We might differ on our reason for saying this, but maybe Begging to be African would have been a better choice. For me, however, this quest has found words over the past year in becoming an Afrikaner. I, the naive reader of Krog and Jansen, want’s nothing more than to reclaim being Afrikaner. I want to claim being Afrikaner, being born from Afrika, wanting to be from Afrika, while being white and Afrikaans speaking, but I want to be that other white African, not the Afrikaner from the Voortrekker monument pictures, not the Afrikaner from the April 2010 letters to daily papers in South Africa,but the new kind of Afrikaner, the one who has no identity other from being part of a democratic South Africa.

And yes, Krog help me with this. I have called Jurie le Roux “one of the unsung heroes of my life” in the past, and I’ll stick to this, althouh I have realized years ago that we differ when it comes to how we understand our own being part of Africa. As a brilliant philosopher and exegete, he was able to point our some of the problems in Krog’s approach. Using French philosophers one could say he, and others, is able to “break” Krog’s work. But just because it’s broken, doesn’t mean it’s broken. Somehow Krog seem to fail the deconstructionists, whom I love – the little I understand about them, and then in my eyes get up and become helpful in spite of messy formulations, lack of philosophical depth, and lack of theological understanding.

And I think it’s something on a more emotional level that really get’s me into Krog’s work. The way in which she attempts to deny her own European heritage at some stages, but then have to admit her comfort in Germany, they way in which she are uncomfortable with her white Afrikaner tradition, but at times are forced by others to admit her own being advantaged by exactly this which she fights against, and the way in which she simply goes out there, and attempt to live relationally with a broader South Africa.

Through messy formulations and all, I find in Krog’s work something which missiologists called interculturation, an exchange of concepts, ideas. Krog might make it sound as if her attempt is simply to become more African, but in her person she really learn from different cultures, and in her story also give of what she is back to those black’s whom she so easily identify with Africa. Maybe I’ll not beg to be black, not even beg to be African, as if there are some ideal form of African out there which I should strive to become. But please let me be that different Afrikaner.

I want to be the interculturated Afrikaner, the Afrikaner that are actually able to listen to my fellow Africans, to allow them to deconstruct who I am, to deconstruct my own whiteness, to help me become more Afrikaner. No, I cannot deny that I also feel this connection with European and white thoughts, that is part of me. But I want to see that part of me through the eyes of my fellow South Africans. I don’t simply want to continue existence as an Afrikaner, but I want to understand my own being white and being Afrikaner, and understand it in relation to other around me, and through this become more of a white African.

Krog would call this something different. She’ll call this becoming black, maybe. She will sound different when she speak about this than I do. But I see in her work how she finds a reinterpretation of her own identity in relationships with black, colored, indian South Africans, South Africans of different languages and backgrounds. She struggles, she’s critical, and yes, in the end we’ll agree that she remain a white Afrikaner, but she’s more and more of a white Afrikaner that finds identity in relationship to others, and in spite of brilliant critique against her work, in spite of the fact that her work could be broken, it’s not broken for me, because on an emotional level, and in spite of critique also on an intellectual level, she helps me along this journey of becoming that white African, that Afrikaner that’s not the Afrikaner that we know.

review: Sout Project

It has often been said that the last thing to change in church is the liturgy. And it’s more often true than not. Theology develop, or maybe more correct would be to say that theology is contextualized, continually, but changing liturgy is often the most dangerous thing to do in church. In the church tradition that I am part of that has certainly been true on many occasions.

The current paradigm shifts happening in the world and the church, and also in South Africa, has been well thought through in many blogposts, academic articles, conversations, books and more. But on Sunday morning when I go to church our music still seem to reflect either the Renaissance era from which our tradition was born, of the height of the revivalist, late-modern fundamental, era which has strongly influenced the mega-church movements. Here and there you’ll find some of the old mystical hymns which is refreshing, but much of the words we sing would sound totally strange is we were to ever say them to each other in a conversation.

Along come my friend Nic Paton and the Sout Project. You can read the story behind the South Project, and it’s debut album Story here, so I’m not going to repeat too much of that. What first struck me about Story was the diversity of voices on the album. Children’s voices, men and woman, black voices, different languages. Suddenly I felt like being in South Africa, and no longer in Australia or America, where the gospel of my youth was born. But not entirely South Africa either, Nic lived in England for a long time, and I believe I hear some of Europe inbetween as well. It has somewhat of a global feel.

Brian Mclaren’s voice come through early on, I still remember the day when Nic recorded Mclaren for the album. But Mclaren’s voice not only come through when he himself sings, but throughout the album Mclaren’s influence on Nic can be heard in the theology. And this, for me, was the most refreshing part of Story. Nic put emerging theology into lyrics. I can now sing along to words which I am so comfortable with! Words to which I can say Aumen, So be it. And I can sing Aumen in various languages on one of the tracks as well.

Vine (Ubuntu), the second track on the CD, bring Nic’s brilliance to the fore in a special way for me personally. The words of John 15, about the vine and the branches are pulled into the lyrics, together with the Spirit from John 16, and merged with metaphors from our own world. “The Web of Life (remember that important book by Fritjof Capra a few decades ago?) is spun by your Spirit“, we hear a few times, “everything contained and sustained in you“, early on in the song, God’s spirit is what holds the universe together, is the energy within, and this flows from the vine of John 15. Maybe this is the song that I’d like to give to my confirmation class when we talk about the Holy Spirit.

One other song that I’d just must mention is Meditation with Mechtild, which is basically my very very good friend Annemie Bosch telling something of her story, which Nic then mixed in with some music to provide, for me, the deepest moment of spiritual reflection on the CD.

Nic will be in Jo’burg this weekend, and you can find him on Sunday morning at 9:30 at Ridgeway ministries in Wessels road in Woodmead, for what promised to be a truly postmodern and post-Apartheid event, with Nic’s music and our mutual friend Jackson Khosa bringing a message. You can find the event on facebook here. Story can be bought @ R110 here.

It would be really interesting to see how Nic’s creation will be used in local congregations that engage creatively with their liturgies.

Auschwitz and apartheid: which do we know better?

I had these two pictures in my sermon yesterday, and asked the congregation to recognize them.

I wondered whether anyone would recognize the first. But within a few guesses one of the high-school girls had it: Auschwitz.

Later the second was shown. But no matter what, no one could recognize this. My colleague, had to point it out: The Apartheidmuseum.

We seriously need to get in touch with our own history…