I walked on mass graves in Kigali

I walked on mass graves in Kigali - and I cried. Two million people brutally murdered in three years in Rwanda. What for? Because of class distinction - between the rich and the poor. If you owned ten cows you became a Tutsi and if you had less you were considered a Hutu. The Hutu's exiled the Tutsis and many of them joined rebel forces to get back into their country. And then the genocide began...and the United Nations and the rest of the International Community would not believe the reports about the atrocities until it was too late. Koffi Anan's repentance as General Secretary of the UN came when the war was over: 'I should have done something about Rwanda ten years ago.'
The hills of Kigali are covered in houses, nice looking houses, and the roads in are in good condition. The taxi driver said to me,'do you like our city? Look how clean it is!'
But the red colour in the dark faces of the people in Rwanda reminds you of the slaughterhouse that Rwanda once was. The people are still weary of trusting anyone too quickly.
Yet Rwanda is one of the most fruitful and fertile lands in East Africa and could become the bread basked of Africa.
The Virungu volcanoes are still active and erupt every few years causing much damage and even deaths. Rain forests harbour 150 000 gorillas that Diane Fossey described in her books until she exposed the poachers and was murdered by them.
I walked in silence on the mass graves and shed tears for a nation that went through ethnic cleansing of atrocious proportions...and I was reminded of Hitler, Stalin, Yomo Kenyatta, Idi Amin and all the other dictators who brainwashed people into accepting their evil causes as if it were natural.
Then I remembered the words of Jesus: 'The thief comes not but to steal, kill and destroy; but I have come that you might have life and have it more abundantly.' The Good News of the Gospel of Jesus Christ is the only hope for the world today, and yet the modern society speaks of the 'post-christian-era' as if Christianity is outdated! What a lie from the pit of hell! The Gospel is just as relevant today as it has always been! It is fresh - like the dew on Mt. Hermon!
The Prophet cried out: 'Who will hear our report? And to whom will the arm of the Lord be revealed?'
That is the cry in my heart today, as missionary, perhaps one of the least, but at least I keep going to other lands to preach the Gospel of the Kingdom of Christ. We can do all the humanitarian work that we wish, but unless people have a change in heart the atrocities of genocide and the killing of wars will continue.
There can be no peace without the Prince of Peace, Jesus Christ the Lord of lords and the King of Kings. At His Name every knee shall bow and every tongue confess that He is Lord.
There is no other way!

The Quiller Memorandum

Wednesday's Child, the theme song of The Quiller Memorandum, a thriller starring George Segal and Senta Berger in the 1966's, is an exquisitely beautiful, sad tune. The opening line being, Wednesday's Child is a child of woe... Max von Sydow with his eerie, mysterious, oblong face and some other great actors like Alec Guinnes also play their roles in memorable performances, but it is the theme music that I remember the most, more than the names of the actors or the titles of the cast.
What makes one remember something for so long? What makes something find a lodging space in your memory bank for 50 years? Goodness gracious, already that long? And still the haunting tone of that melody seems to ruffle my feathers every time I hear it played or play it on the piano late at night when everyone's gone to bed.
When a violin plays the tune it tends to tug at one's heart strings even more...
I don't want to dwell on the performance, just the memory, the Quiller Memory, the face of George Segal, tilting his head to pay attention to what someone has to say. He also played in The St. Valentine's Day Massacre. I remember how he cheerfully greeted his mother on that fatefull day before he got massacred with his other mobster friends in a garage on the 14th of February. Although George Segal is known as a comedy actor as well, it is that serious face, that wry smile and the frowning and questioning eyes that seem to be imprinted indelibly on my mind. But more than my memory of his spy role in Quiller Memorandum, I wonder about the beauty of that tune...it calms the soul and stirs the spirit and carries one away to another world of beauty and peace and joy...there must be a heaven after all if there is such heavenly music!
Beethoven confessed that he heard music from another realm, from the centre of the Universe somewhere...perhaps we can hear it too... if we listen!
Funny thing, strange and eerie just as the John Barry score of The Quiller Memorandum, he sadly passed away in January on the 30th at the age of 77. Hans Zimmer who won an Oscar for the score for Inception (De Capprio starred and Ridley Scott directed)wrote an article for Time's Milestones on p.13 of the February 14 issue, 2011 in which he describes how he too remembers The Quiller Memorandum score. 'Sometimes the reason we have such deep and lasting emotional connections to movies is the music and everything that made the mood of those movies...' He was a Yorkshire man and even in his brightest work, you could always see the moors and the fog, even his cheeky stuff had an underlying darkness.
John Barry also wrote the scores for Zulu (which launched a young Michael Caine), Born Free, Out of Africa, Dances with Wolves, On Her Majesty's Secret Service (Bond), and Hammet. What he had learned from Barry is that mood is good, according to Zimmer.
Amazing that the Quiller tune drifted passed me at that time, so strongly that I could not ignore it, I had to write about it and remember it. And like Zimmer I cannot recall all the details of the Quiller Story, but the tune stayed in my memory bank. And it was in the same month that the composer passed away. Are we all in touch with the Infinite? Do we feel what is to come before it does? When will we wake up to this reality?
Astonishing...but true.

Sadness and Laughter

The first time my grandmother took me to a circus was in Leeuwdoringstad, a small country town in the Western Transvaal, near Klerksdorp and Makwassie. She told me how much I would enjoy it.
The two of us went into the tent, and the smell of the animals and the dust made me wonder if I should be there at all. I was only 4 years old.
Then the circus master announced the first event and the band played out loud with trumpets and drum rolls and smashing cymbals as the lions came into the cage. The whip cracked and it frightened me.
The people woed and aahd and applauded and I sat rivetted next to my grandma. Then it was the horses with plumes on their heads like ladies in the Pentecostal church choirs that I was used to on Sundays.
And then they sent in the clowns to keep our attention as they changed the scenery and the set.
They had painted faces that looked sad. Their mouths were too large and sagging and their eyes drooped downwards. Their hats were too small and their trousers and boots were too big. Both of them had large red leather gloves on. Inside the gloves were crackers. When they slapped each other through the face the crackers went off. It shocked me and scared me and I started crying. It was too much for a little boy.
'Let's go home Ouma,' I pleaded, 'I don't like all this fighting!'
Ouma oblidged. It was the last time she ever asked me to go to the circus.
I thought about this moment and thought about watching Cirque du Soleil in Disneyland with my friend Brian and his wife.
The absolute artistry and agility of the performers astounded me and the timing of every moment to the music was mind boggling. The trampoline act took my breath away. I hurt my back on a trampoline when I was 14 and suffered back trouble for many years until the Lord healed me completely. I tried to do a backward somersault without any coaching. Dangerous.
But today I thought of that first visit to the circus and today is the last day of the year. Tomorrow will be the start of another year, a new year, a brand new year.
And I thought of the sad looking clowns.
Clowns make people laught, don't they? Why are their faces always sad?
Charlie Chaplin,Peter Sellers and all the other comedy stars, Gene Wilder, they all have a note of sadness to their lives. It is almost an integral part of a clown's armoury: his own sadness.
There is sadness in most lives, but the antedote is comedy and laughter. Thank God for someone who can make you laugh. Laughter is like good medicine. A merry heart has a continual feast.
Patch Adams made the terminally ill patients laugh in the hospital and got banned as a medical practitioner, but he did more good than the medical profession realised.
I once prayed for a lady called Priscilla who suffered from asthma attacks since she was a little girl. When I finished blowing into her mouth she was at first upset and then realised that she normally pumps air into her mouth with the asthma pump and then she started laughing until we all laughed with her. Dr. Sachs, a doctor in our church in Milnerton, came forward and explained how laughter is used for chronic asthmatic patients to bring relief.
So at the end of the year, let us lay aside the weight of sadness we might have experienced and let us remember the moments of sunshine and laughter. Let our spirits be revived and perked up again, because the Joy of the Lord is our strength, after all.

Walking on Water

While Jesus was busy praying in the fourth watch, early in the morning He saw the disciples in the storm and went to them walking on water. It is not humanly possible to walk on water. I once met a man on a plane who was an engineer that designed film stunts for his son who was a Hollywood stunt man. He was drawing a picture of a car bursting through the glass of a third storey in a building. The car travelled at a certain speed and carried on going horizontally to the ground for a while before nose diving. When I showed interest he explained to me that the speed of the vehicle breaks the force of gravity just like an aeroplane takes off, but when the car looses speed it begins to go down. So he positioned the cushions to catch the falling car quite a distance from the edge of the building. Then I realised that Jesus must have walked very fast to get to the disciples in the storm. The lake is 12 miles long and they were in the middle, which means they were about 6 miles from Jesus. He came to them suddenly. They thought it was a ghost and did not recognise Him. The solutions to our problems often come in a form we do not recognise because we are so full of fear. When we break our fears, we can believe! Then the very things that want to swallow us up and destroy us, have to serve us to get to the other side to reach our destination!
When the disciples willingly received Him into the boat they were at the other side of the lake, immediately! This miracle of transportation is often overlooked when we read the Bible. It was a supernatural event. The same speed and force with which Jesus approached them in the boat transported them to the other side.
Isaiah 1:19: if you are willing and obedient you will eat the good of the land. How long does it take to become willing? It only takes a moment. How long does it take to become obedient? It only takes another moment. Our stubbornness and disobedience is like idolatry and witchcraft that prevents us from ‘eating the good of the land’. Why don’t we repent of it and become willing and obedient to do the will of the Father in Heaven?

It is December

It is December. December in Cape Town is quite unlike December in any other place. It is summer and sometimes you have hot, sultry summer days, but mostly you have the Cape Doctor, the South Easter, sandblasting your legs and face with the coarse sea sand making it quite uncomfortable to stay on the beach for too long. Even the dainty little shelter canvasses they sell at all the out-and-about stores cannot withstand one gust of the South Easter. Beach umbrellas are the first to go rolling like tumble weed in the desert of Arizona.
But kitewurfers and windsurfers from Italy and France love the wind, of course. They cavort effortlessly above the waves and do stints in the air above the wreck at Dolphin Beach. When they hit a surfer or body boarder they refer to it as a blimp in the road. I've been hit by a windsurfer, once, on my back. The fin gaffed into my back and left a painful afterglow which lasted for weeks.
But today is one of those other kind of days...yesterday too, it started off with mist rolling in from the icy Atlantic on shore and it covers Milnerton first. The mist sneaks into the house like an old house friend and you smell the sea in your lounge. That is one reason why I live here: I love that smell, and I love the mists. Normally it turns out to be a warm day, a windless day if there is early morning mist. But you never can tell with Cape weather: like Sting sings: four seasons in a day!
And then of course one hears the blast of the fog horns from the ships lingering in the bay. Their souns is particularly eerie at night, of course. Like a foreign language being spoken by some prehistoric monsters calling out to each other without knowning where the other one is located.
A fog horn says so many things: hey, I'm over here! Hey, where are you? Mind you don't bump into me unnecessarily! Give me a wide berth! Let's play! Do you like my sound? Is anyone else out there?
Imagine a mist horn symphony!
But it also says, I'm alone out here...it has an attractive, lonesome, scary sound to it, and yet it is merely a mechanical device used to warn other ships of one's whereabouts.
But I love the sound of the fog horn...I lay awake at night to listen to it. It is so different from the hooter of a train or a car. It has depth to it. It is deep calling unto deep. Somewhere deep inside we respond to it without words and reply, i am here, it is ok.
The voice of God deep inside us is often like the old fog horn. It is comforting yet alarming; unexpected and yet desired; vitally necessary and still surprising; deep and yet so clear. It speaks to us when we most need it. It warns when temptation comes. It encourages when energy is low. It heals when there is hurt. It inspires when life overwhelms us.
Ah, the voice of God in the mists of the spirit realm! How we need it! How we long for it! How we ache without it.
May this December not merely be a time to remember, but may we hear the fog horn of the voice of God speaking to us in so many ways that we will enter the New Year with renewed energy, faith and hope. And the greatest of all is love...agape divine love, unconditional love, love so great that pen and poet cannot describe it. For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son that whoever believes in him should not perish but have ever lasting life. Hear that fog horn sound in your own spirit and pass it on to someone else in the mists of time.
It is December...

Star-crossed Lovers

Star-crossed lovers
I remember when I saw Franco Zeffirelli’s film about Romeo & Juliet. Leonard Whiting starred as Romeo and Olivia Hussy shone as Juliet. There was the grand opening sequence with the commanding voice of Verona’s Prince that boomed out the ‘On pain of death’ speech, if any of the Capulets or Montagues would ever be caught fighting in the streets again.
‘Two households both alike in dignity, in fair Verona, where we lay our scene, from ancient grudge break to new mutiny, where civil blood makes civil hands unclean from forth the fatal loins of these two foe, a pair of star-cross’d lovers take their life, whose misadverntur’d piteous overthrows, do with their death bury their parents’ strife’.
I remember Michael York’s resonant metallic voice as Tybalt the nephew of Juliet’s mother, and the energetic, almost bouncy performance of David McEnery as Mercutio whose revelling and bogus bravery brings Romeo into a skirmish with Tybalt.
The many unforgettable scenes, the masked ball, when Romeo finally spots his love and the beautiful love-sick song accompanied with a lute: ‘caper, o caper play me a song’ the theme song of Romeo & Juliet, that became a hit at that time; the balcony scene, ‘O Romeo, Romeo, wherefore art thou Romeo?’ and the morning after when Romeo awakes, ‘T’is the Lark!’
The escape of Romeo and the intervention of Friar Lawrence trying his best to convene between the two lovers, but then the messenger misses Romeo, passing each other like ships in the night; and the tragic tomb scene, where Juliet awaits her Romeo, but he mistakenly assumes she is dead and not sleeping, and then the catastrophe…the romantic suicide, as predicted in the prologue right at the beginning, almost unavoidably poignant.
Images float through my head and tunes grow in volume as I reminisce. Then I remember the school play I wrote at Milnerton High incorporating all my cricket and soccer buddies into the play allowing Jerome and Dagmar to play the lead roles.
But I, being a bit of a clown, turned the tragedy into a comedy, with apologies to William Shakespeare, of course.
My ‘star-crossed’ lovers just couldn’t die! I turned their names to Romea and Julio, just to avoid confusion! When Romea arrives at the tomb and sees Juliet lying there, he drinks the last drops of the ‘poison’ she drank and dies. Then she wakes up and says:
‘T’was but a sleeping tablet!’
But, alas, she observes her Romea lying motionless by her side and takes his dagger and commits suicide. Then he wakes up and realises it was just a sleeping potion. But when he spots Juliet lying there with a dagger in her hand, he takes a pistol and shoots himself. She wakes up and says:
‘T’was but a switch-blade!’ But perceives the gun and is beyond her until our hero wakes up again and announces:
‘T’was but a blank!’
And in the end I had them both live happily ever after! The audience experienced much laughter and the newspaper reviews by Geoffrey Tansley of The Cape Times praised the ‘youthful’ and ‘original’ production sky high.
But I often wonder what happened to Leonard Whiting…he disappeared out of the movie business after that role. Olivia Hussey went on to play Mary, the Mother of Jesus, in Zefferelli’s, Jesus of Nazareth that starred the great British actor Robert Powell with his beautifully elocution-perfect voice and sad blue eyes (memorable especially on the cross with blood trickling down).
I think Leonard Whiting played his role too perfect and no-one could ever imagine him playing anything else than Romeo. So even if one saw him in another movie one would still think of him as Romeo. It’s a bit like Clint Eastwood, as the man with no name, in his Spaghetti Westerns. But he found a way to survive fame and became Dirty Harry and played many other roles until he discovered his penchant for directing films for which he eventually won an Oscar.
But Leonard Whiting became a shooting star…I think he made one more movie and disappeared off the scene. And yet, he was perfectly cast, his passion, his facial expressions, his stunning hair that looked gorgeous even when he sweated in the fighting sequences. And his athleticism and his voice: he became the legendary figure of Romeo – he wasn’t acting.
And then I think of a score of other actors and actresses that came and went…Christopher Jones who starred opposite Yvette Mimieux the French actress, Peter McEnnery (the more handsome brother of David who played Mercutio) who starred opposite the illustrious Catherine Deneuve (I still remember the rugby practice in France so well)…and many others.
Were they only star-crossed actors?
Then I think of sport stars who have come and gone – without much fame or fortune on their side…and preachers…and musicians…and just people I knew…
Here and there some survived. Star- crossed?
Peter Sellers believed he had to marry someone with the initials B.E. because his stars foretold him so. He married Brit Ekland. His marriages never succeeded. In the end he left nothing to Michael his son, but gave his entire estate to his last wife before he died.
I met Michael – when they shot the interview with him at Lords. I was sitting in the exact spot where Peter Sellers, who lived opposite the revered home of cricket. Apparently he came for a meal and sat in that seat every Thursday. And it was a Thursday that I was there (in the off-season) and listen to this: I ordered Bangers & Mash, the meal Peter Sellers used to order! How strange a co-incidence is that?
The TV crew actually asked me to move to another seat so that Michael could sit there where his father sat for the interview! (We watched it on TV many years later in South Africa and I shouted: I sat in that seat!)
What attracts two people: their stars? Or is it certain chemistry between them? Why are parents never satisfied with their children’s choices of marriage partners? Why do parents give their children so much grief? Why, o why, o why? What should be the most memorable day of their married life, the actually wedding day, often turns out into a nightmare that they want to forget!
Is every couple star-crossed?
I think it is much simpler than that – there is something supernatural behind the scenes that direct the pathways of people. It is the unseen hand of God. And it is hard to discern in the natural. But if there is a bit of faith the size of a mustard seed, it could grow into a great tree where the birds of the air could come and make their nests. Their marriage could become a blessing to many.

Gary Player's secret

Gary Player was probably one of South Africa's greatest golfers. He beat the likes of Arnold Palmer and Jack Nicklaus in his time. One of his favourite sayings was, 'the harder you practice the luckier you get!'
I once read about him, somewhere, that he hit 1000 golf balls per day! And he jogged regularly and did push ups. But besides his physical discipline he had the habit of keeping his cupboard tidy. He learned that from his father who died when he was only a young boy. His father never saw him play golf. His father never saw how much he achieved. Sometimes he had nightmares about his father - watching him play golf! But his father taught him how to keep his cupboard neat.
His shoes were in the right place, his socks would be folded up and placed in the one corner and his belts in the other corner. His shirts would be folded up and packed on top of each other and his ties would hang in order. The trousers and jackets would all be hanging in a certain order.
Gary firmly believes that the little disciplines of ordinary life is what helped him when he had to sink the championship winning put on a golf course. When the mind is used to orderliness in normal circumstances it will be disciplined under severe pressure as well.
My father was like that - he was a lieutenant in the Air Force of South Africa during WWII and flew the Tiger Moth planes. His dream was to fly the Spitfire but he never went to England. The Air Force kept him at the home front and put him in charge of the Arsenal because he did such a good job of putting things in their place.

So you can imagine what his cupboard looked like: like a men's department store! It was never out of place. Even on the day he died, I opened his cupboard and it was extremely neat and orderly!

There is an obscure verse in the New Testament describing Jesus' tomb. The disciples went to the tomb and found it empty. But they found the grave clothes and the head cloths folded neatly at the head where Jesus lay. That is a sign of a slave telling his Master that his work is done and that he is waiting for His reward.

Jesus had completed his earthly mission to perfection. He folded up his graveclothes neatly and stacked it where he laid his head to show to His Heavenly Father that his work was done: it is finished!

In the army we only got weekend passes if our cupboards passed inspection.

I also know that artists need a bit of chaos around them to be creative! The earth was created out of chaos, remember? Even God requires some chaos to prove His creativity!

But there is a lesson to learn here, somewhere,that a disciplined mind is a certain asset under pressure. To think under pressure is not just a gift, but a practiced behaviour. What you cannot do under normal circumstances you cannot hope to do under pressure.

So, thanks, Mr. Player, for that bit of advice, we salute you.