no, i did not get eaten by a lion

well, i've neglected this blog for quite some time now, to my dismay and embarassment. rather than try to catch up on the month or so missed, i'll start with the most previous events and work backwards.

It is a rainy and relatively cold Sunday afternoon here in Jo-Burg, and I've just returned back from services at Melville Union Church and am sipping some rooibos tea. I'm also trying in vain to get the local classical music station to come in through my clock radio but getting mostly static and random bits of Indian music, traffic reports, and African language talk shows. To be really corny, I guess I could say that parallels what my own thoughts have been like recently: constant static while searching for my classical Western tastes and values, jumbled up by South Africa's complex realities of race, history, desparation, and violence.

This morning's message was entitled "Dealing with Doubt," focusing specifically on Psalm 73:

Psalm 73 (NIV)

BOOK III : Psalms 73-89

1A psalm of Asaph.
Surely God is good to Israel,
to those who are pure in heart.

2 But as for me, my feet had almost slipped;
I had nearly lost my foothold.

3 For I envied the arrogant
when I saw the prosperity of the wicked.

4 They have no struggles;
their bodies are healthy and strong. ^[a]

5 They are free from the burdens common to man;
they are not plagued by human ills.

6 Therefore pride is their necklace;
they clothe themselves with violence.

7 From their callous hearts comes iniquity ^[b] ;
the evil conceits of their minds know no limits.

8 They scoff, and speak with malice;
in their arrogance they threaten oppression.

9 Their mouths lay claim to heaven,
and their tongues take possession of the earth.

10 Therefore their people turn to them
and drink up waters in abundance. ^[c]

11 They say, "How can God know?
Does the Most High have knowledge?"

12 This is what the wicked are like—
always carefree, they increase in wealth.

13 Surely in vain have I kept my heart pure;
in vain have I washed my hands in innocence.

14 All day long I have been plagued;
I have been punished every morning.

15 If I had said, "I will speak thus,"
I would have betrayed your children.

16 When I tried to understand all this,
it was oppressive to me

17 till I entered the sanctuary of God;
then I understood their final destiny.

18 Surely you place them on slippery ground;
you cast them down to ruin.

19 How suddenly are they destroyed,
completely swept away by terrors!

20 As a dream when one awakes,
so when you arise, O Lord,
you will despise them as fantasies.

21 When my heart was grieved
and my spirit embittered,

22 I was senseless and ignorant;
I was a brute beast before you.

23 Yet I am always with you;
you hold me by my right hand.

24 You guide me with your counsel,
and afterward you will take me into glory.

25 Whom have I in heaven but you?
And earth has nothing I desire besides you.

26 My flesh and my heart may fail,
but God is the strength of my heart
and my portion forever.

27 Those who are far from you will perish;
you destroy all who are unfaithful to you.

28 But as for me, it is good to be near God.
I have made the Sovereign LORD my refuge;
I will tell of all your deeds.

Now, I'm still sorting this all out, but I became extremely sad and nearly angry after reading this. Melville Union is relatively new church, intentionally founded as a racially diverse, service-oriented congregation, which I really enjoy. So looking around during the service, honestly, all I could envision when I read verses 3 and 4("For I was envious of the arrogant, when I saw the prosperity of the wicked. For they have no pangs; their bodies are sound and sleek. They are not in trouble as other men are; they are not stricken like other men") was the speaker as a black South African and the "wicked" as white South Africans. I don't quite know what to make of this reaction. Certainly, while I've been here, serious questions of justice, God's will, and forgiveness have come up relatively frequently as I sit in church services, or small group studies, or in traffic behind stuffed taxis and just drop my jaw at the absolute inhumanity of apartheid and the ultimate humanity of forgiveness.

One of my first experiences in South Africa was wondering into some kind of Christian campus organization function at Wits and hearing past leaders of the group describe the changes of the organization over the last 20 years. Well, obviously apartheid issues came up (fyi: I was the only white student present in the group of about 425 people) . One scene that a middle aged man described continues to both inspire me and trouble me: members of his group - both black and white- would meet together in the mornings to pray. But often, as the gentlemen recounted, they would be praying for seemingly opposite things - a white student praying that his Afrikaans brother would not get killed in some government appointed raid on a township alongside a black student praying that HIS brother would not get killed by soldiers in that raid. Now how does one even begin to sort out ideas of justice in that?

By the end of Psalm 73, the speaker picks himself up and realizes that the things he envies are just "dreams" or "phantoms" in the RSV, and that God is his ultimate desire, that the day of justice will come.

I don't know what it is, but I just feel impatient and even guilty after this passage because the depth of suffering is so much greater for some than for others. So does increased suffering make their faith stronger or just more desperate? I don't know.

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In any case, last week, I took a bit of a holiday to Kruger National Park in the northeastern corner of South Africa. Kruger is one of the ultimate tourist attractions in the whole country and probably Sub-Saharan African in general. I travelled with a friend from the US who was visiting SA with her two other friends (all women who worked for the US Forest Service in some capacity).

We left early Monday morning to drive towards the northwestern edge of the park at the Phalaborwa gate. From Phalaborwa, we headed east to Letaba, then south to Olifants and Lower Sabie, and finally exited the park at Crocodile Bridge. The three ladies then dropped me off at Nelspruit where I caught a Greyhound bus back to Jo-Burg, while they headed further south to Durban.

The entire experience was amazing, and a bit too much for me to describe adequately right now, so I'll just give you some highlights. Basically, I felt like I was reliving the hours of National Geographic videos about Africa that I watched as a young tot.

My absolute favorite part of the trip was a sunrise bike ride at Olifants camp. Our gang joined an Austrian couple and two young male guides at 4:00 in the morning and drove for about 30 minuets in a safari vehicle to get to the trailhead. At 4:00, the sun is already starting to come up over the horizon in a sheer orange purple blaze across the sky, so everything looked grey and just slightly gilded. On the way to the trail, we spotted three hyenas and a leopard which is fairly unusual. By 5:00, the whole sky was lit and we began our ride through the bush towards a lake. Once at the lake, we stopped for breakfast with the hippos, literally. I munched Marie Biscuits and gulped Powerade about 20 feet from a herd of hippos and about 40 feet from a crocodile. There was even a little baby hippo playing around in the water, which received lots of oohhhs an ahhhs from the group of mostly women. Even I had to oohh and ahh a bit; I was such a tourist.

We ended up seeing all of the Big Five (lion, rhino, leopard, elephant, and buffalo) plus some other pretty amazing mammals and birds. The four of us combined took thousands of pictures - no joke. I can only post a few of my 200-some now because my internet bandwidth is very low, but hopefully I'll be able to post additional ones soon.

Well, scratch that, I can't post any pics.