My beloved gay truck

On a lighter side, this post came to mind as I ponder whether my double-cab bakkie will be ready for collection from the panelbeaters today.  I had to return it for some minor adjustments arising from repairs occasioned by an unfortunate coming-together with another vehicle just over a month ago.

When I bought this vehicle in 2007, I came in for some stick because I had gone for one of the Chinese bakkes from GWM.  My reasoning at the time was that an all-in price of just under R150,000 (which included leather seats, a major upgrade to the sound system, rubberising, a towbar, and a canopy), and seeing as the mechanicals were based on a Toyota engine with Bosch fuel injection (even if it does look like a "pavement special" between a Nissan Hardbody and the old Isuzu KB), I couldn't go too far wrong.

And so it has proved, with 40,000 trouble-free kilometres under the belt (apart from last month's ding).  I'll grant that the Toyota Hilux is a better vehicle, but whether it is nearly R180,000 better is a moot point.

However, owning this vehicle has not been without its moments.  When I was considering the purchase of a more rugged vehicle than the Renault Scenic I owned at the time (which was a great vehicle, but the service from Renault dealers was diabolical) in view of entering the ministry and the possibility of being stationed in a rural area, I did some online research first.

Unfortunately, since the GWM brand was fairly new in South Africa at the time, when you did a Google search on GWM you ended up with a whole lot of unwanted propositions that could result in instant dismissal from many institutions, including the Methodist Church.  You see, GWM also stands for Gay White Male, which meant that my computer screen was filled with classified ads from homosexual men looking for meaningful overnight relationships.

Three years on, however, I have come to terms with my same-sex relationship with this particular GWM.  He's not the prettiest truck around, and the ride is like a bouncing ball compared to my wife's sofa-comfortable Camry.  But then the Camry can't lug a ton of bricks / floor tiles / furniture / holiday luggage.  The GWM has relocated me twice since entering the ministry, with no problems other than a burst tyre just outside Grahamstown.  He's reliable, dependable, and does what he's designed to do - and so I love him!

Christianity vs. culture - which takes precedence?

One of the struggles that many of us have as Christians is when it comes to conflicts between our cultural practices and our Christian values.  The subject came up in one of our seminary classes, where a colleague defenced the superiority of culture over Christianity by stating that "I was born an African; Christianity is something that I only adopted later in life".

This came as a bit of a shock to me, since I have always strived to ensure that my Christian beliefs supersede any other aspect of my life.  Not that I've always got it right, mind you, but the intention and the will is certainly there.

Lest I be accused of being Euro-centric or (gasp!) racist, allow me to explain my disquiet at this concept of culture being superior with an example from my own life.  I was born in England, and even though my parents (at that stage) did not dare darken the doors of a church other than to attend weddings and funerals, it was an essential part of our Englishness to be "christened" in the Church of England.  And so it was off to the local vicar, who agreed, after the promise of an invite to a good knees-up (British slang for a party of note) afterwards (at which, I am told, the vicar got so plastered on port that he had to be helped into a taxi to take him back to the vicarage), to do the necessary sprinkling that would fully induct me as one of Her Majesty's loyal subjects.

In later years, when I had accepted Jesus as Lord, I underwent what I considered to be my first (and only) "real" baptism which, in actual fact, was "re-baptism" - this being a big no-no in the Methodist Church, but in my defence I didn't know much about concepts such as "prevenient grace" at that stage.

This experience however meant that when my son was born, my wife and I were determined, as Christian parents, that James' baptism would be given its proper place and meaning within our Christian faith, so that there would be no ambiguity in later years concerning whether he had received a "proper" baptism.  So much so that we decided not to baptise him as a baby (undergoing a dedication service instead, at which we as parents made the appropriate promises to bring James up in the love of Christ), but instead left the decision up to him to make once he had come to an understanding of his own relationship with Jesus.

The upshot is that while many of my cultural practices are cast out of a distinctly English mould, in this case my Christian beliefs firmly overrode my Englishness.

Now don't get me wrong.  I'm not saying that all cultural practices are necessarily in conflict with Christianity.  Let's not throw the baby out with the bathwater here, lest we repeat the mistakes of many of the early missionaries who equated Christianity with being "English gentlemen".  But in areas where culture is at odds with Christ, surely culture is the one that has to give way?

I'll explain my specific concerns in a later post.

Standard Bank: You greedy bastards!

This article appeared on website Fin24 two days ago:

Johannesburg - Standard Bank Group [JSE:SBK], South Africa's largest bank by market value, has announced to staff that a fresh round of retrenchments will most likely hit managers based in its London and Johannesburg offices.

A confidential email was circulated on Tuesday afternoon signed by group CEO Jacko Maree and Sim Tshabalala, head of Standard Bank South Africa.

The email, which cited cost pressures for the staff reductions, was confirmed by Standard Bank spokesperson Ross Linstrom.

In its interim results to end-June Standard Bank said its earnings rose 11% to R5.9bn during the period under review on the back of improved market confidence and better returns from wealth management business Liberty Holdings [JSE:LBH]. The group also managed to nearly halve its impairment charge from R7bn in the first half of 2009 to R4bn.

The dividend was maintained at 141c.

At the release of the results in August, CEO Jacko Maree said Standard Bank wants to become a link between international capital markets and Africa, focusing specifically on the oil, gas, telecommunications, power, infrastructure and mining industries as well as the financial sector.

"If you want to play in this game you need a strong dollar balance sheet - not just a strong rand one," said Maree.

Okay, let me put on my bean counter cap for a moment and see if I understand this properly.  Standard Bank, one of South Africa's "Big 4" banks, has just increased their earnings by 11% (inflation's been running at around 5%) at a time where South Africa (and, indeed, the world) is just beginning to eke its way out of the worst recession in living memory, and their profits for the six months ended June 2010 were R5.9 billion (yes, that's nine zeros).  Yet somehow profits of just shy of a billion rand per month are not enough, since Standard Bank has announced that retrenchments are about to take place due to "cost pressures".

Now hang on a minute here.  I've never been retrenched myself (thank God), but my mother has - twice - so I know what it's like for a family to be suddenly faced without income.  And I've also been in in the painful position in my own business where, having just about exhausted the bond facility on my house to meet payroll expenses, I've had to tell an employee (whom I went to school with) that I could no longer keep him on.  Even though all ended well for him since he was able to secure another job in which he could start immediately after leaving my employ, it was still the worst thing I've ever had to do in my life.  But to want to even consider putting people out of work because you're "only" making a billion a month?

The market reacted yesterday by pushing Standard Bank's share price up by 1% on the news of the job cuts.  So let me see if I get this one - shareholders actually profit from employees' misery?  Don't get me wrong - I'm no socialist, and I have little time for the rantings of one Julius Malema (ANC Youth League president) about nationalisation.  But if ever there was an example of capitalism gone wrong, here it is in black and white.

I wonder how CEO Jacko Maree sleeps at night.  May God have mercy on his soul - right now, there ain't too much sitting in mine.

Walking through the valley of the shadow of death

Fans of the Rocky movies will know that a fair amount of time elapsed between Rocky V and Rocky Balboa, and so it seems that a similar amount of time has passed since my last blog post.

And just like Rocky Balboa, I have a lot of "stuff in the basement" that I'm struggling to deal with at the moment.

Without a doubt, coming to SMMS at the beginning of this year was always going to represent a major upheaval in my life, but i had no idea just what a challenge the experience would be.  The fault is not that of the seminary - my struggles have a lot more to do with my stage of life than anything else, and the staff have (for the most part) been extremely pastoral and supportive to my family and I - especially when we've needed a shoulder to cry on.

Yet somehow, after nine months here, I'm finding myself facing a number of struggles.  Individually, they are manageable.  Collectively, they are becoming overwhelming.

Firstly, the workload.  SMMS represents a sizeable investment by the MCSA, and the "powers that be" would certainly not want to have us sitting around picking our noses.  And I have quite a capacity for work - after all, this is my 14th year of post-school education, and the first on a full-time basis, which means that I've spend virtually the bulk of my 20s and 30s juggling studies with a corporate career or business.  In fact, during 2001 I was seconded to a major implementation project, was completing the second year of my Masters, and had also been enrolled in the Management Development Programme (for which I had been turned down two years previously, hence the Masters).  So I know what it takes to keep the balls in the air - or so I thought.  You see, last year I had a major fight with EMMU (the body that "owns" probationer ministers in the MCSA) because they had only enrolled me for three subjects and I wanted to do four.  This would have left me with just four subjects plus an academic report to enable me to complete my BTh through TEE College this year, which would have been a doddle seeing as I am now full-time.  However, the powers had other ideas and decided to switch me into the SMMS BTh programme, which meant that we are now doing eight subjects (nine last semester).  Granted, the credit values are lower, but the time spent in class is not - nor is the assignment load.  God put me on this earth to achieve a specific number of tasks.  Right now I'm so far behind, I'll never die! 

Secondly, the culture shock.  Now don't get me wrong - despite growing up in apartheid South Africa, I did in fact have contact with black people, especially since the advent of democracy.  I've worked with a number of black people over the years, and count a number of them among my friends.  But this is a bit different - with 7 whiteys out of 77 seminarians, things are going to be a bit skewed away from the culture we have grown up with.  And that's okay.  I can handle going to church and reading the liturgy and Scripture passages in Zulu.  I can deal with Amadodana-style singing (although I SO wish that sometimes they'd pick up the pace a little).  And I've got used to the long prayers in Xhosa.  But there's other things my colleagues do that get under my skin after a while - little things like talking to one another at the top of their voices, the driver of the Quantum leaning on the hooter because the kids for school are a bit slow out of the blocks, and the animated discussions that take place between the ground and top floors when I'm trying to get some work done.  One can handle this for a few days - a month, even - but after nine months it begins to wear a bit thin.  So today, when one of my colleagues was washing her car and playing her music rather loudly, I snapped at her a bit more harshly than I might have done under different circumstances.

Thirdly, the loss of independence.  For instance, I've been a member of various medical aid schemes for 20 years.  I've got the whole procedure "thing" nailed.  And because the MCSA's medical scheme is one where you have to pay up front for your day-to-day services, I've worked out that if you go to the doctor and pay by credit card, provided that you get the paperwork in quickly, the money's usually reimbursed into your bank account by the time you need to pay what's owed on your credit card.  However, at SMMS many of my colleagues have never been on medical aid before.  The majority don't have credit cards.  Which means that a different plan needs to be made, involving the seminary handling all claims, receiving the refunds, and even having to regulate the doctor visits (one or two have seen a weekly visit to the GP as being their "due").  Unfortunately, the approach is "one size fits all", which means that whereas before it was just me, the service provider, and the scheme, now the long hand of the seminary is involved in my medical affairs.  When you've held a senior corporate position and run your own business, the last thing you want is someone else controlling your finances - no matter how well-intentioned the system may be.

Fourthly, there have been a couple of episodes where, being a minority, I've felt rather out of place - even unwanted, in fact.  I'm not at liberty to go into details, but every once in a while one comes across a person who, when they find themselves in a dominant position or a position of power, tend to throw their weight around a bit.  Add into the mix a bit of a chip on this person's shoulder about how the whites have been the oppressors for 350 years (which is true to a large extent, except that (a) I'm only 41, and (b) I'm not consciously aware of having "oppressed" anyone, irrespective of their race), and, shall we say, it's upset me enough at times to want to either leave the Seminary or punch said person very hard in the face.  Not very Christian, I know ... perhaps one day I'll look back and see God's lesson in all of this.

Add to this the "normal" pressures of trying to squeeze in some form of family life (I nearly lost my family in 2002 because I spent every waking hour at the office, so family time has become sacrosanct), earning some money to keep the wolves from the door (seminarian allowance doesn't go too far when you have a wife, child, two parents and a house to look after), and maintaining some sort of devotional and worship life (both for my own spiritual sanity and to remind myself why I'm here), and you can imagine that it would be an understatement to say that I'm feeling somewhat overwhelmed at the moment.

So this morning was (almost) the last straw when my wife came back from the washing area to inform me that some of her underwear had been removed from the line.  This is not the first time something of ours has gone "walkies", and I'm not the only seminarian who has experienced this.  It's horrible to think that there may be some amongst us who have sticky fingers, but the evidence sadly proves otherwise.

Right now, I'm not in a very good place at all.  I need time to work through these "demons" - something which, four weeks away from the start of final examinations, I'm unlikely to get too much of.  What I DO need is massive amounts of prayer.  This weekend my family and I are going away on a church camp with Prestbury Methodist.  They are good folks and many of them have become dear friends, but they're also honest and mature enough not to take any of my crap, either - which is probably just what I need at this point in time.

Yet as I write this, it seems as though the flow of words onto the screen have had a cleansing effect on me.  The issues haven't gone, of course, and they still weigh heavily on my soul, but I get a sense that they're now "out there" and I can start dealing with things.  And I can somehow begin to identify with King David who, at a time in his life when he had lost the plot in so many ways, was given, by God, the comforting words of Psalm 23:

¹ The LORD is my shepherd, I shall not be in want.
 ² He makes me lie down in green pastures,
       he leads me beside quiet waters,
 ³ he restores my soul.
       He guides me in paths of righteousness
       for his name's sake.
 ⁴ Even though I walk
       through the valley of the shadow of death,
       I will fear no evil,
       for you are with me;
       your rod and your staff,
       they comfort me.
 ⁵ You prepare a table before me
       in the presence of my enemies.
       You anoint my head with oil;
       my cup overflows.
 ⁶ Surely goodness and love will follow me
       all the days of my life,
       and I will dwell in the house of the LORD
       forever.

God being my helper, the issues that are threatening to overwhelm me will also be overcome.  Like a small child who swallowed a five cent piece, this too shall pass...

... he slowly emerges, battered and bruised, from the depths of assignment hell ...

Wow - I feel like I've been in a time warp, where a whole chunk of September has simply ... disappeared!

Part of the reason has been an arduous journey into the debths of assignment hell, with four (or was it five, or six?  I can't remember...) assignments all falling due within the same week.  Added to that was yet another bout of 'flu, so perhaps the drug-induced haze was also a contributing factor.

Then again, my innate sense of overkill probably has a lot to do with it - with Ross normally being the unfortunate victim.  The reason for this is that (a) Ross gives the most interesting and challenging assignments, and (b) he doesn't believe in setting word limits - "do what you have to do to answer the question" is his mantra.

So this week we had to complete an assignment for the course "Christian Holiness in the Wesleyan Tradition" which was based on a paper written by Jimmy Dube about the silence of the Methodist Church in Zimbabwe in the midst of the crisis in that country.  Our task was to write a similar "prophetic"-type paper on a topic involving our own Connexion (the MCSA).  With the bit between my teeth, I set about my task, and in the process broke my own record with a paper comprising 9215 words and including 32 entries in the bibliography.

Past history has shown that I have normally done well with these "thud test"(*) assignments, with marks in the mid-80s.  Likewise, some of my colleagues have done equally well in submitting 3-5 pages and being rewarded with 75s.  Clearly I have failed to comprehend the law of diminishing returns!  Yet the strange thing is that when I sit down at my desk and start writing, the creatice juices just begin to flow and flow, and before I realise it, another 15 page treatise has rumbled out of my printer.

I REALLY need to get out more...

(*)  For those readers who absolutely HAVE to know, the "thud test" is a throwback to my internal auditing days, when we had to submit regular reports to top management.  When you had completed the report and printed it out, you had to drop it onto the desk from a height of two feet.  If it went "thud", it was ready for submission.  I still want to compile a tome that will crack a glass top when dropped ...

Opening one's mouth ... to change feet

Amidst the mountains of laundry, Belinda and James spent yesterday morning at Pelham's inter-house athletics meet, where my "I'm dog-tired and need a break from helping people" wife got stuck in buttering rolls and chopping lettuce for the food stalls.  In the meantime I ws in Phayipini with one of the society stewards from Prestbury, discussing matters pertaining to the Matthew 25 ministry that Prestbury runs.

By the time we got to lunchtime, it was as hot as blazes and we would have LOVED to have gone home for a much-needed snooze, but unfortunately Mother Hubbard's cupboard was bare and we needed to do some shopping.

Now when a mind is dog-tired, it makes some rather strange (and, in this case- X-rated) connections.  For instance, James is still trying to figure out why, when I picked up a packet of pasta (the type with the twirly-wirly shape) and said to Belinda, in a fairly loud voice, quite innocently (I swear!), "You like screws, don't you", that she went all red-faced and burst out laughing.

It seems that, once again, I had opened my mouth to change feet.

Sipho

Yesterday afternoon it was back at Town Hill Hospital to drop off yet another batch of clean laundry, and to collect yet another batch of dirty laundry ... now I know about the whole idea of "a housewife's job is never done", but on an intensified scale.

However, as we spend more and more time there, one starts to identify some of the "characters", and one who stood out for me is a dear soul namesd Sipho.  Now I don't know what sort of mental problem he has that warrants his stay at Town Hill (and to be quite honest, I'm a bit scared to start analysing different forms of mental illness since I'm convinced there's a category that I fall into myself!), but when I first met him on Wednesday, he was standing at a barred window shouting at one of the nursing staff who was snatching a five-minute breather, swearing like a trooper.  She was quite embarrassed at this for my part, probably because I was wearing a clerical collar, but I assured her that I would not fall over for a few expletives, and I'm sure that God wouldn't, either.

But as we unpacked the car, who was standing next to us, but dear Sipho - placid as a lamb.  Unsure quite what to do, I handed him a bundle of clean washing to load onto the trolley - and his face shone like a beacon.  Granted, he was a bit unsteady on his feet, and his trolley-driving skills leave a great deal to be desired, but clearly this little bit of help he was offering did wonders for his sense of self-worth.

So yesterday, when we arrived to collect our next load, Sipho was in the thick of things, helping us to sort out the clothing from the sheets and other bedding while keeping up a four-lettered running commentary punctuated by "What else can I do, Father", and "Are you okay, Father", and "You must wear gloves, Father - this stuff is f***ing dirty, Father".  Sipho is probably old enough to be MY father, but although I am not a Catholic or Anglican priest (Methodist ministers are not normally addressed as "Father", and in fact I prefer "Steven" or "Hey You" rather than "Reverend"), the respect with which Sipho addressed me, amidst the swearing, was quite touching.

As we left the hospital, I was reflecting on this encounter with Sipho, and pondered on the main need that human beings have.  It's not food or shelter - it's the need to be needed, to be of use, to make some sort of contribution in life - no matter how small.  Hopefully, for a few brief moments, we were able to give Sipho this dignity.