Wednesday 28 April 2010

Roger Federer's thinking process


Roger Federer was surprisingly knocked out of the clay court competition in the second round by a 40th seeded player. The post match interview had him scratching his head trying to explain this strange phenomenon.
'It becomes so easy to win that one forget just how hard it is to dominate this tennis circuit. But a loss is perhaps just what is needed to wake you up again. When you keep on winning you stop thinking about how you are going to play and take things for granted. You do not think of how to play agains the next opponent and then something like this happens. You have to check your thoughts and change your thinking in order to win again.'
Notice how many times he referred to 'think'. There is a key here. How man thinks; so is he. Every action has been pre-meditated, good or bad. If you can think through something and think strongly enough, it will bring the required result.
There are the uncontrollable issues that you just have to accept as they come your way, but having clear thoughts about what you do is very important, if you are the world's best tennis player or not.
The apostolic injunction is to continually renew your mind with the Word of God - to begin to think the thoughts of God. Jesus rebuked Peter for thinking the thoughts of the flesh instead of the thoughts of God. Later on Paul tells us to learn to think about things that are 'above' and not 'beneath'.
There is an elevated thought life that rises above the things that want to drag you down all the time. It is a controlled thought life that leads to a life of self-control.
Roger Federer clearly told us all that it is important how we think about things in our life. The mouth speaks out of the abundance of the heart. And the small rudder that determines the ship's course is like the tongue that controls our lives.
It is good to take some time off to just think through issues and determine which course to take or which thoughts to allow or disallow.
Clear conceptual thinking is something very valuable. We have to learn to excerice our minds, just as we excercise our bodies and learn to excercise our spirits as well. But that is another story all together...

Tuesday 27 April 2010

Buzz Lightyear


I met Buzz Aldrin when he came to Johannesburg many years ago. I had to accompany Marli Kelly on the pinao. She was asked sing a song before Buzz spoke. I sat next to him on the platform. His wife and daughter was with him.
The first thing I noticed was his funny shoes. He explained that all the men who went to the moon returned with some physical defect. 'We're not made to walk on the moon,' he told me. The arches of his feet sank permanently and he had to wear specially built up shoes.
He wasn't a believer on the way to the moon but after that experience and on the way back he changed his mind. 'There has to be a God if you see how beautiful the earth is from space,' he told me.
My grandmother on my mother's side saw a vision in 1965 of a man in a cumbersome white suit walking on the moon. He was wearing a helmet. We laughed at her and sometimes even mocked her as we watched the full moon rising.
'There's Ouma's man on the moon!'
In 1968 my granny sat at the kitchen table of my Uncle in P.E. listening to the radio anouncing the first landing on the moon. Neil Armstrong's famous words came over the air from outer space,'one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind!'

They named Buzz Lightyear after Buzz Aldrin. The comic character always goes beyond existing borders: to infinity and beyond!

Buzz told me about the extreme tests they had to go through to eliminate all the hopefulls until they only had a handful men left over to select the first team to walk on the moon. They had to be made of the right stuff. They had to be able to handle extreme pressure. If you make the wrong decision up there you destroy the mission and the men who are with you.

J. F. Kennedy said, 'you ask, 'why go to the moon?', and I say, 'why not?' We choose to go to the moon!'

I remember those days. There were some old folks who refused to believe it was happening. They said,'it's a capitalist trick of the Americans!' Just like the guy they found in the jungle who was still fighting the war in Borneo 32 years after the war had ended!

Bob Dylan sang, 'The times they are a changin',
ccome gather round people wherever you roam,
and admit that the waters around your head has grown
And accept it that soon you'll be drenched to the bone
If your time to be here is worth saving
And you better start swimmming or you'll sink like stone
For the times they are a changin'

A prophet in song, Dylan, for surely times have changed, incredibly. And those who do not change with it, fall far behind...in business, education, electronics or church...especially church...they want to continue as if their rituals are everlasting...and the times have already changed!

Buzz is a comic character to today's kids - to me he was a real hero.

Saturday 24 April 2010

Every Generation

Every Generation
Mike & the Mechanics sang a song, ‘Every Generation blames the one before…’ and then tells how he tried to communicate with his own father but just wasn’t able to ‘ In the Living Years’.
I heard this song the first day after my own father died. It made me weep. I sat alone in a hotel room in Bloemfontein and sobbed. I missed my father. His death came suddenly. I had read a scripture an hour before he died: ‘go ahead without me, I am an old man and I will just make your journey cumbersome.’ An hour later my mother phoned me and said, ‘Boetie, don’t get a fright, but your dad passed away this morning.’
We were all going to East London as a family for a holiday to watch Aje, my first son, play cricket for Northern Transvaal Primary Schools in the Perm Week. My dad greeted him at the airport when he received his Provincial colours.
That is the last time we saw him here on earth. It was sad. I remember going to my parent’s house and he was already taken away to the mortuary. My mother showed me where he laid. She was busy in her bathroom and he was in his, shaving. Then he gasped for his breath, three times, and she heard him collapse. When she opened the bathroom door he was lying on the floor with his head on the ledge of the shower. It happened in three seconds. In three seconds he exchanged the earthly for the eternal realm. He stepped over from this life to the life hereafter. Death was the doorway for him into another world.
I drove back to our home in 57 Marais Street, Brooklyn, Pretoria (now Tswane) that we rented from an old farmer. I decided to go for a morning swim. As I dived into the cold pool on that warm summer’s day, 12th of the 12th 1989, I felt the coolness of the water release the heat in my body and as I came up out of the water I said goodbye to my father: ‘Goodbye Oupa!’ I released his spirit to leave the earth – that’s how I felt.
It was not difficult for me to bury him. I had to conduct the service in Alberton Apostolilc Faith Mission Church hall and in the graveyard I threw the last sand on his coffin. My sister cried a lot. For some reason she wanted my golden Cross Ballpoint Pen and I gave it to her, but she dropped it into the grave onto the coffin. I let it go. It was buried with him in his grave like the old Pharaoh’s took their golden wealth with them into the pyramids.
Before he died he told me, ‘I have no regrets, my son.’ Few people can say that. He also used to say, ‘if you want to die by faith, you have to live by faith.’ Something else he was known for was a saying, ‘born once, die twice; born twice, die once.’ This referred to the second death which is an eternal separation from God. If you are born again by spirit and water (John 3:3-5) you will once experience the physical death and not the spiritual death.
I miss my dad. We had our misunderstandings, but in the end we loved one another to overlook the differences and accept each other as we are. He was a militarist and a planner; I am an artist and a non-conformist.
Every generation has its differences. He grew up in the depression years and during two world wars. He knew what it was like to rebuild lives after devastating wars. Every penny counted. I grew up in the Hippie Revolution and went to university in the Woodstock year, ’69. Long hair and floral shirts, bell bottom jeans and high heel boots…wasn’t what he wanted to see in his son. And then I became an actor…the worst nightmare for a pastor in a Pentecostal Church!
But later on I became a missionary and he used to listen to me preach – differently – and even made some notes which I have with me today.
God bless his heart for all he did for me and for all he was: he was a simple man and kept a middle of the road existence, no fancy cars or clothes. He saved what he could and left some money for my mother to survive on. We inherited a small amount eventually that helped us along the way.
He gave up a lucrative business career and sold his brass and iron factory in Alrode to use the money in the full time ministry to subsidise us as a family for the salary was small and the pension hardly enough to buy bread and milk every day! He gave up his life for the Gospel’s sake, and for that I highly honour him. Few men of his calibre would have done the same. But because he was in the ministry, like both my grandparents and my uncle, I entered the mission field and my son Aje is now the 4th Generation preacher! We might not be wealthy factory owners, but we have a wealth hidden in the preaching of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. That is our riches!