On Friday night I had dinner with my friend Claire. We talked about her brave and compassionate work with The Greenbag Project (a community-based care project working with people living-homeless in Braamfontein). The next day, as I sat on a plane about to take-off to return home to Cape Town, she and I were texting about their Saturday night community-table potluck event taking place in a church in Braamfontein.
I’ve been reading Sophie Strand’s potent and moving memoir “The Body is a Doorway” and at the moment that Claire and I were texting I was reading a section of the book on how Jesus (or as Sophie calls him: the folk magician) related to the concept of purity. She says this":
He offered something radical. His offering was to brush off the question of purity altogether. “Who cares? Come and eat with me. Come and share a meal”. He purified not by cleaning, but by including everyone in communal healing, storytelling and food-sharing. Everyone was invited. No one was exiled.
That same night, Dave and I went to watch the documentary on Desmond Tutu’s life (simply called Tutu). I wept most of the way through as we travelled back through South Africa’s history - moved moved moved by our shared past of violence and separation, his moral clarity, his love for all humans and his incredible courage and heart. I also laughed when he laughed. How can you not? The man was the embodiment of the full range of human feeling.
My fellow South Africans. How can it be that we are treating our brothers and sisters from OUR continent with such contempt and violence?
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