The Influence of Passion

Tuesday, March 8

I thought about Rapule all Monday evening, in particular, how his face lit up when talking about his passion.  In thinking about how I want to portray the stories of people in my art, I got excited about capturing that fire and life in their eyes when they begin sharing what really matters to them.  Regrettably, I didn't get a photo like that of Rapule but I set out for my next interviews with just that in mind.  Along with Dave Wayman and Kristen Wood, we returned to Diepsloot to talk with Pastor Eddie Ramabulana from the Diesploot church we had attended on Sunday.  When he spoke of his work, that of helping the community and planting new churches there, his face lit up.  Just like Rapule, when he spoke of his passion, he became fully alive, light and life shining from his eyes.  I tried to take photos of him when he wasn't aware (with the camera sitting in my lap).  I saw that same animation in his wife when she talked of her work with the children of Diesploot. This photo of Pastor Eddie comes close to capturing his excitement.

Pastor Eddie Ramabulana

The pastor and his wife then walked us over to the Diepsloot Police Station for our next appointment.  Officer Pauline Refilwe Mogale agreed to tell us a little about herself.  She proudly told us of a major sting operation that she had played a leading part in.  Her main role at the station is to work with the victims of domestic abuse and she makes a big difference in the lives that she touches.  As she talked about the situations that she's addressed, her passion began to shine out of her.  She has a real love and calling to the people she helps.  She also shared with us the real danger that the officers face each day while working in Diepsloot.  There are areas in the settlement that even the police do not venture into at night.  When we offered to pray for her, she excitedly ran to get her supervisor and he then requested that we pray for the entire staff on duty at the moment.

Refilwe Mogale

For lunch, the team met up with the Mosaiek staff and some of the Emthonjeni staff for more braii (barbeque) in a popular Zandspruit restaurant.  I'm mentioning this mainly to tell you about my new food love:  pap and sauce.   Pap is a ground white corn meal, similar to grits or polenta, only ground much finer and cooked with less water so that it's the consistency of thick mash potatoes, thick enough to pick up bite sized pieces with your fingers to dip it in sauce  (usually a tomato based sauce).  It's traditionally served with meat, and  I think I could eat it alone at every meal.  I'm now in pursuit of the ingredients to make it! 



Pap and Sauce



Tuesday evening found us back at Mosaiek for a big event:  The Awakening Artist seminar.  Artists from Mosaiek and other churches in the community filled the room as Cindy West described to them the journey that our artist ministry has been on for the last 11 years, and how God is calling all Christian artists to "create work that  no one has seen before or even realize that they need to see."  I could feel the thirst in the room of artists needing to hear that they have a valuable and legitimate role to play in the church if they follow their calling.  I recognized that feeling of thirst because I myself was in their shoes when the artist ministry first began at Woodmen Valley Chapel.  It's in learning to give yourself permission to believe that God loves artists and loves speaking through them that sets an artist free to pursue his or her calling.  I cried through a great deal of the evening as I realized how far our group has traveled together, where that journey has taken us and just out of sheer disbelief that I've had the chance to be a part of it.   New York, Africa and probably beyond...

The artists who attended the seminar are just now forming the circle of community that I described as setting us free to be who we are created to be.  I can't wait to see them reach the point where they are encouraging each to express what God gives each of them. 

The circle for this day was the effect that a stone has when thrown into water.  It causes ripples that spread and spread and spread.  Just like the passion of people doing what they are called to do.

Kristen Wood singing for the Awakening Artists of South Africa



A Circle of Light in the Darkness

Monday March 7 

I think that I mentioned in a "pre-Africa" blog that one of our missions on this trip was to hear the stories of people that we met.  Today was our first official opportunity to do just that.  The team was split up between three different locations.  I went with two other artists to the Emthonjeni Community Center located in the settlement of Zandspruit.  The center provides job training to residents in the settlement, pre and post natal care, a preschool program and an after school program for the children of working parents.  I met a young dancer named Rapule Lebere.  We seemed to be a total odd couple, but within a few minutes it became apparent that we had parallel artistic journeys.  Let me tell you the story of Rapule and his dream.

Rapule volunteers at the center teaching dance to the children.   He himself had an underpriviledged background.  For as long as he can remember, he's loved to dance.  He would watch television and copy moves that he saw and before long, was passing on his moves to other children.  Someone noticed his talent and his intention of bringing dance into his community and at their own expense, enrolled him in dance classes.   He eventually travelled to London looking for work in the theatres there, but returned to South Africa when his mother passed away.  Determined to give back, he began working with the children at the center and eventually wrote a musical called, "The Darkened Light."  He explained to me that even if you cover a light with a basket, the light is still shining in the dark.  He wants to produce his musical with the children of Zandspruit to bring attention to the talent there and to show the world that there is so much to be valued in the people of the settlements.  He believes that it will also bring awareness to the children that they have more options in life than they realize.  While he still would love to be dancing in a London show, He knows that his talents are better spent working with children to give them their own dreams.  Now, he says that his greatest success would be to watch one of his students from Zanspruit perform professionally. 

Rapule's light in the darkness is my circle for today and I hope to someday hear that his dream is realized.

Freedom within a Circle

Sunday, March 6.  We began the day attending Diesploot Community Church's worship service.  (Diepsloot is the settlement community that I mentioned in my Feb. 25th blog post.)  If you've ever spoken with someone who has gone to church in Africa or Latin America, you'll know that the services run a minimum of 3 hours and you think to yourself  "How could I possibly sit there for 3 hours?"  Well, you don't sit there.  There was dancing and singing and shouting and music and the time seemed all too short.  Everyone becomes a part  of the service and no one is remotely bored.  Up front was a guitar, a keyboard, a set of drums and about 8 vocalists. They rocked the place!  Dancing would start up front and people would run from the congregation to join in.  One person would do a series of steps and the others would join in.  Mostly, they danced in a circle.  The preaching was passionate and profound.  They didn't just go to church, they went there, broke the alabaster jar and poured out all that was within them before God.  It was all over too soon, and we headed back to Mosiaek's campus.  On the way, Liz Jarocki and I were talking about the "we" cultural element that was obvious to us in the service.  For instance, everyone dancing in the circle and following each others steps.  We've all seen African dancing on tv, but being there live brought home the fantastic energy of it.  The dancers made eye contact across the circle, smiling and urging one another on, completely engaged with each other.  Liz pointed out that at many points though, an individual would step into the center of the circle and do his or her own thing.

We attended two services at Mosaiek that evening.  The second service was very similar to Woodmen Valley Chapel's style, but the first service was unique to an evangelical church.  Mosaiek calls itself not "Non-Denominational, but "Post-Denominational," and I really appreciated the distinction.  They are culling the best practices from all Christian religions and using them to encourage a deepening of faith.  The 6:00 pm service on Sundays is "Lectio Divina," and is taken from the Catholic tradition.  Held in their small, traditional chapel, Lectio Divina is a chance to meditate on God's word.  A passage is read from the bible and then time is given to sit there in silence, apart from the noise of the world and just think about what it is saying and letting it soak in.  Sunday's passage was 1 Corithians 13's well known verses on love.  Now, silence and meditation are right up my alley, so I became annoyed when a few words and the driving beat of Mumford and Sons song "Sigh No More" circled over and over in my head until I finally listened to what the words were saying:  "Love that will not betray you, dismay or enslave you, it will set you free..."  The Africans dancing in the circle this morning popped into my mind and I knew somehow that when one of them stepped into the circle to dance their own dance, they were free to do so because of the support of the community of love around them.  They were free to express who they were created to be. And I realized that this is exactly what the community of artists that I've journeyed with at Woodmen for the last 11 years has done for me.  They have made me a part of a community where we all learn from one another and work together to create something of beauty.  It's this circle of love, passion and encouragement that makes me feel free to step out and do my unique dance as the artist that God has created me to be.  I could never be who and where I am today without that circle of love.  How wonderful is that?

The Circle Begins

We arrived in Johannesburg  on Friday just as the sun was setting.  Our driver Howard Johnson piled all 10 of us and our luggage into his van and drove us to our temporary home.  Mosaiek (the church we were partnering with) owns a retreat property called Origins about 45 minutes outside of the city.  Once we left the lights of Johannesburg, we were travelling in the pitch dark and Howard began describing the surroundings to us.  As we entered the Origins property, Howard named all of the animals that inhabited the property, lions and rhinos among them.  At one point, he stopped the van and told us that if he were to turn off the van's headlights, we would see hundreds of eyes shining in the dark, just watching us.  As we entered the secured gates enclosing the housing, we noticed powerful electric fences topped by barbed wire which Howard informed us were "game fences" to keep the wild animals away from the inhabited part of the retreat center.  The next day, when we mentioned Howard's wonderful introduction to our rural surroundings to one of the local team leaders, he had a good laugh.  The "game fences" are there to keep people out and the only animals that we were likely to see and hear would be cows, sheep and the Origins mascot, a dog named Bushman.  That gives you a good idea of the fun that Howard had with us and why he became an integral part of our experience.  Howard is a bush-guide for hire and we all would love to venture off into other parts of Africa with him.  He was a true blessing to us and experienced everything that we did on the trip.

As it turns out, Rita Dickerson (my roomate at Origins) and I did have our own little wildlife encounter.  We shared our room with a cute little frog.  I found him charming, but Rita was less excited about this third roomate, so in essence, I became a frog-wrangler whose main responsibility was to chase our new African friend out of the room daily. 

"Afro"

This photo gives you an idea of our surroundings at Origins.  We didn't have much time there during the day, but waking to the beautiful surroundings each morning was so refreshing.  I already mentioned the fences surrounding the property and we were faithfully watched over by guards who patrolled the property at all times.  Origins is in a location known as "The Cradle of Humankind," called that because the oldest evolutionary fossil thought to be human was found here.  It seemed so fitting that as "Awakening Artists" coming to awaken creativity in the South African churches, we should be cradled in the location of God's greatest creative work--humankind.  So, the circle for Saturday is that of this cradle's location and significance in which we were nestled.

Our first day, Saturday, began with a visit to the Apartheid Museum in Johannesburg.  There was such an overwhelming amount of information that it was impossible to take it all in, but I found that having read Cry the Beloved Country, I had a good background for what I saw.  It was impossible to view this history without comparing it to America's own history of slavery and the civil rights' struggles of the 60's.  While our civil rights movement occurred 50 years ago, it has only been 10 years since Apartheid ended in South Africa and one can't help comparing the slow but sure racial progress in America with the long journey South Africa has before it. 
We next visited the Mosiaek Church campus for some very helpful cultural training regarding the differences between White North Americans and Black Africans, two halves of the circle formed by the peoples of South Africa.  By the way,  in South Africa, the races are referred to as either white, black or colored.   Some of the differences described to me were very evident in our encounters and did a lot to describe what we saw and how I ended up being effected by the black Africans.  Americans are "Me" oriented, lead with the question "Who are you?," live for the future, value our children above all as our future and identity, and see the world in black and white.  The black Africans think in terms of "We," and are more concerned with who you are versus what you do.  They define themselves by the past through family history, respect their elders as the most valuable members of their community, and see the world less in a "glass half empty or glass half full" manner and more as an onion of layers of truth.  

The day ended with a South African "braai" (barbeque) at a home looking down on all of Johannesburg.  I met two women that evening that were to spend a great deal of the week with us, Estelle and DK.  Both are on staff with Mosaiek.  Estelle's job is to organize trips for visiting teams, and DK is the director of the Emthonjeni Community Center that we would be visiting during our stay.  I learned that both of them loved to paint and create.

DK and I later in the week.

Estelle and a team mate from WVC, Kirsten Wood

A Story of Circles

I'm home from South Africa, and I can't say that I'm in the same place that I was when I left.  It will take me some time to process how I am different, but from the people of South Africa, I certainly learned ways  that I hope to be different. 

God chose to speak to me daily through the simple shape of a circle.  I saw everything in terms of circles and everyday ended with a story of a new kind of circle.  A circle of culture, community, or a spiral of destruction.   Even as I'm writing this, I'm thinking that the year or more before South Africa, I was living my life running in circles, too dizzy to focus on anyone one thing or person. 

Today I'll spend journaling memories and sorting through photos.  Tomorrow, I'll begin leading you in circles through the stories of my experiences.