12/16/2009 • 9:51 pm Comments Off on 16.12.2009 cellphone free
The 16.12. is a public holiday in South Africa – and I decided to make it a cellphone free day. What a pleasure to be able to live undisturbed from the ringing alerting one to a phone call or a sms or, as it is a blackberry, an incoming email. A real peaceful day and an excercise I will try to do soon again.
Filed under: Reflection, Uncategorized, cellphone
12/14/2009 • 7:44 pm Comments Off on 14.12.2009 astonishment and questions..
Family visit in Delft South – a normal township community outside Cape Town. With two visitors we are out to give a first hand experience of the living conditions in such a place. For me it is always and again and again interesting to see the reaction of the visitors, when the place they are standing, well-known through film and documentaries, is suddenly real without the glass of a TV set. One can smell it, touch it, feel it – realise it. “How can one live like this?” is the often the question; or better the one visitor passing by and seeing all the shacks: “But there are obviously no people living inside these huts…”.
How is it possible, that people in Europe and the US and other rich countries have so succesful blended out the realities of the majority of people – and let’s be honest: without this majority of this world living in poor condition, under the poverty line, not using much energy and other resources, there would be no upmarket living standards for the minority. Missing justice and sustained injustice – and clever justified sustained injustice from the side of the “winners” in the struggle for a better life is a reality and comes shocking clear to the visitors of Delft or any other similar place.
I hope for a lot more visitors – being touched by the realities and being turned into ambassadors for justice exactly there, where they live and work in the world.
Filed under: HOPE Cape Town Association & Trust, Reflection, Society and living environment, Uncategorized, Delft, HOPE Cape Town Association & Trust, injustice, justice, visitors
12/11/2009 • 3:42 pm Comments Off on 11.12.2009 Friday afternoon
Friday afternoon.. a long week gets to an end and slowly but surely it is time to close the office and to await the weekend. This evening is the Annual years end dinner of the Archdiocese of Cape Town, Sunday the 25th anniversary of the Catholic Church in Tafelsig – before I have to go to the airport – after the celebrations in Tafelsig there is still an evening out on my list with friends from Germany. It’s funny, but weekends seems to be as busy as weekdays… knowing that the church is against Sunday work, it is time also to advocate a free weekend for priests. 🙂 COSATU for priests – wouldn’t that be an interesting one?? 🙂 Just joking. 🙂
3rd Sunday of Advent is arriving – and hopefully from the 4th Sunday things will calm down a bit, so that there is time for some reflection of Advent and Christmas before it is over again. I guess that we priests are specially tempted to forget to make time for ourselves, especially in those important times of the church year. Every year the same old resolutions to do it differently, but at the end: time passed, same story as usual.
Today we also had our last formal meeting with the senior staff of HOPE Cape Town – discussing all the small things still waiting to be tackled before everybody is going into holidays – but it seems that almost the whole time, at least the office of HOPE Cape Town is occupied with somebody. So no complete shut-down.
Everybody a great weekend and the blessings of the 3rd Sunday of Advent.
Filed under: General, HOPE Cape Town Association & Trust, Reflection, Uncategorized, HOPE Cape Town Association & Trust, resolutions, Tafelsig, Weekend
12/10/2009 • 12:53 am Comments Off on 10.12.2009 Long dinner
Invite for dinner – and it turns out to be a very interesting and chatty evening – coming home after midnight does not happen that often. It is nice to sit and chat around a table not feeling the time going by… it’s always also a compliment for the hosts to have been able to bring interesting people around their table.
Slowly but surely people getting into holiday mood, and also we from HOPE Cape Town starting slowly to wind down the operations, from mid next week, most employees will take leave and quite some will also travel to see their extended families where ever they live.
Slowly but surely another year comes to an end – Christmas is almost in reach. It will be the first time to be without my “Heilig Abend” service on Christmas eve, one of the most important and most emotional services I had to celebrate while being the chaplain to the German-speaking Catholic Community. I will miss it – and lots of people have asked whether I would not be able to come back for this one time. My answer is always the same: No, it is not possible. If you are gone, you are gone. Sounds easy, isn’t so easy, but it is the right thing to do. I hope that the service held by a fellow colleague will be touching the lives of the many coming to this very special occasion.
Yesterday we also had our last management meeting of HOPE Cape Town and our last meeting with the Catholic Aids Network for this year. Things have been wrapped up and the rest will be on the agenda again in the coming year. One can sense the intensity of Cape Town at this time. Almost everybody is tense at that time of the year – because everybody wants everything possible to be done before mid December, before the Mother city falls into the holiday coma – only awaken again mid January. Cape Town is fun, so one says, but Cape Town is also stress – because things are not done constantly, but at certain times of the year. And November till mid December is one of the most busy time – the summer holidays well deserved – for all but the priests, who have to work over the festive season… 😦 But I know from own experience that in between all the festive days there is also enough time for us clergy to rest a bit…, so no complains but anticipation of this mixture of work and pleasure time for all of us in one of the greatest cities of the world: Cape Town 🙂
Filed under: General, Reflection, Society and living environment, Uncategorized, cape town, catholic aids network, catholic community, festive season, HOPE Cape Town Association & Trust, Mother city
12/08/2009 • 11:18 pm Comments Off on 08.12.2009 4 murdered priests in 9 month
4 Catholic priests have been murdered in the last 9 month – again yesterday a foreign priest, having dedicated his life for the needy and poor in South Africa. It seems that priests are becoming indeed soft targets, putting into account also all the robberies and burglaries of parish houses and convents. My fellow German priest in Johannesburg, who served the German-speaking Catholic Community until 3 years ago was also held up a whole night with some gun swinging gangsters. And it is not only the priests – how many funerals have we as priests held for murdered people?
I don’t write this now to paint an odd picture of South Africa – but with 50 murders per day we definitely are having a problem here in the south of Africa. And the brutality and disrespect for life is surely something to be addressed urgently. Not only because we have this statistics, but also, because it seems that we are getting so much used to hear such news, that they only shock us partly. We take it as given, that we are burgled, robbed, that people are stabbed, gunned down – we mourn about it, but then we attend again our daily struggle – until the next time.
For me, this disrespect for life is one of the deepest trouble of South Africa as a nation – and we have to address it. May the Soccer World cup and the focus of the world on South Africa help not only to put infrastructure for cars and transport in place, but also an infrastructure in our South African hearts so that we learn again about the sanctity of life.
Filed under: Reflection, Society and living environment, Uncategorized, brutality, murder South Africa
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