I have resisted blogging for a very long time. At first it struck me as narcissistic. But hey, if everyone else is doing it… Then I figured it was too time consuming. And it probably is (so this is not a post-a-day blog). But I have always found the best way to think is to do it out loud. So this blog is me thinking out loud about what has always been the heart of what drives me in life:
Why are things the way they are and how can they be different?
The avenues I have chosen to explore this question, and the related questions of identity, purpose, reality, relationship, etc., are primarily spirituality and psychology (though I am also interested in politics, economics, sociology and arts and culture). The outward manifestation of this is a career in teaching theology, specializing in pastoral care and counselling, but it drives most of what I do or have done as minister in the church, pastoral therapist, academic, cultural critic, husband, father and friend.
I am a ‘Reverend’ in the Presbyterian Church (UPCSA), but am an ecumenist at heart, and prone to descralizing holy cows, hence the title of the blog (with a nudge and a wink to self-advertising – I really am my own brand!)
TO A CERTAIN EXTENT IN MY CONTEXT I AM EXACTLY LIKE YOU…WE MAY BE IN DIFFERENT CULTURES/CHURCH LIFE/HISTORICAL BACKGROUND—FOR ME WE SEEM TO HAVE THE SAME APPROACH TO HOW WE RESPOND TO ISSUES
Lovely new header pic. Am trying to work it out: I see
- A hole of sky in the land; a yin and yang?
- A languid horizon line – beautiful.
- Africa : red Earth, yellow veld grasses, huge sky, hints of colonial definition.
Am I getting it?
The yin yang “hole in the sky” image I hadn’t even noticed! Spot on with the rest, the African context with hints of colonial definition, the “red dust” (it is from the fecund earth of Africa that we are all born), and of course the journey towards the horizon. But a few further things I liked about the symbolism of the picture, which I took in Mokala Game Park in the Northern Cape: All of us are confronted by potholes in the journey of life, which force us to stop and decide if we are going to try and go around the pothole or through it. When there is water in the pothole you have no idea how deep it is and sometimes you just have to drive in slowly and see what happens. Also, although the water-filled pothole is an obstacle (in metaphorical terms, a life crisis) it is paradoxically the same water that is life-giving and from which new growth emerges.