Seeing and Believing

A sermon preached on Mark 10:42-52 in The Chapel of the Good Shepherd at The General Theological Seminary on Friday October 2^nd 2009

“Take heart!  Get up!  Jesus is calling you!”[1]

Bible characters get the strangest nicknames.  As a graduate from Methodist,  Anglican and Mormon Sunday Schools, I feel particularly qualified to make such a sweeping generalization!  In an effort to impress on my young mind the core life-lessons of the Bible, a long series of earnest and well-meaning teachers have left indelible fingerprints on the associations I immediately make in my mind when I hear the name of a particular Bible character.  “What one thing,” my teachers surely must have asked themselves while preparing the Sunday School lesson, “What ONE thing can I impress on these young, minds about the character in today’s lesson?

Crossing over – to the “other side”

A sermon on Mark 4:35-41 preached at the Cathedral Church of Saint Mark, Salt Lake City, Utah, on the Third Sunday after Pentecost, June 21st 2009

It is Jesus’ idea, Mark tells us, to cross the lake to the other side as night is falling.  After a long day of teaching on the lake shore, a small flotilla is crossing the Sea of Galilee when there is a sudden, violent, unexpected storm.  If you were going to be in a storm on that particular lake, you’d want to have the likes of  Peter, Andrew, James and John on board.   They had grown up around water; they made their living on this lake.

Doubt, Uncertainty and Belief

A sermon on John 20:19-31 preached at St. Peter’s Episcopal Church, Chelsea New York, on the Second Sunday in Easter, April 19th 2009

I am a bit of a doubter.  Actually that’s a lie.  I am a big doubter.  If this were an Doubter’s Anonymous meeting, I’d probably say “Hi, my name is Blane and I’m a doubter.”   There are some things that I just have a hard time believing in.  And there are other things in my life that, if I hadn’t experienced them for myself – seen them with my own eyes, witnessed them for myself – I would never have believed them if someone else had told me it were so.

Another Van Pletsen Storyteller

Dina-Ann Boessenkool

Introduced by Roon Lewald

My cousin Dina Ann is providing fresh proof that the ancestors of the Van Pletsen tribe all qeued up to kiss the blarney stone. Dina’s mother (my Aunt René, who is still hale enough at 89 to plan her umpteenth trip to Europe this year) is the  last survivor of my maternal grandfather Frans van Pletsen’s brood of four daughters and one son. The story-telling gift which prompted my own mother (Reinet’s elder sister Helen) to record the family’s history in her “Van Pletsen Saga” has resurfaced in Dina Ann Boessenkool (née Vincent).

Prospero se skiereiland

Deur Roon Lewald

(Scroll down for an English Translation)

1. This isle is full of noises…

Jy wonder soms watter skalkse geeste
hierdie skraal vinger land geskep,
van die hand van Afrika geskei het
deur die hoe kneukels van sy berge

en geplaas het tussen wêreldmere
wat hier kop-aan-kop baklei oor
die besit van dié besondre plek,

waar hul wisselstryd van wind en weer
sy see- and bergtonele telkemaal vertower
en besiel met sy unieke plant- en dierelewe.

The Zen-Lunatic Art of Building Eva’s Cupboard

By Roon Lewald

Assiduous readers of this blog may remember “Eva” (pseudonym), who shared several important chapters of my life and accompanied me during a magic tour of the Land of Oz (see “Arguing with God at Coffs Harbour”) before we broke up. Plain-spoken, argumentative Eva, whose wilful nature charmed me, buoyed me up and shattered my nerves by turns – thankful as I am to have anchored in calmer waters since we parted, I often think of her with deep affection and gratitude for what she meant to me during some very difficult years of my life. My mingled memories of her are best illustrated by a letter I wrote to some friends shortly before Christmas 2003, a year or two before our final rupture:

Alice-aus-dem-Wunderland

Roon Lewald

Scroll down for an English translation

(Für Alice Markja – 3 Tage alt)

Liebe Alice!

Dass wir so lange auf dich warten mussten

ist kaum wunderlich, denn wer

möchte schon das Wunderland,

aus dem du kommst,

mit dieser öden Welt vertauschen?

Hier suchst du ja vergeblich nach dem weissen Hasen,

der mit stets gezuckter Taschenuhr

und geplagter Miene

so nervös vorbeihetzt, um die wunderlichen Wünsche

seiner stets erbosten Herrin zu erfüllen.

On Afrikaans

There is, for me, something remarkable about well-crafted Afrikaans prose. Her words are fertile; a faithful translation into English will often demand of a translator three words for each pregnant Afrikaans word. She remains, for this writer, a language that at once embraces and estranges her readers, for she is essentially tribal.

Any engelsprekende that has ever ventured into a conversation in Afrikaans with Afrikaners might know what I’m trying to place my finger on: his toungue immediately betrays him as an outsider; there is an awkward moment of sheer horror when conversation halts — and resumes — in English. There is little to no middle ground for those who speak Afrikaans as a second, third or foreign language. Our battered vocabulary and slaughtered syntax betray us immediately for the buitelanders that we are. It is our shiboleth.

Leipoldt: The Universal Afrikaner

by Roon Lewald

Louis Leipoldt

In one of my latest visits to the blog of an American friend, I was intrigued by a sensitive description of her visit to the remote grave of Afrikaans poet C. Louis Leipoldt, sheltered by an overhanging ledge of sandstone at Pakhuis (Storehouse) Pass in the rugged Cedarberg mountains some 200 miles north of Cape Town.

Christian Frederik Louis Leipoldt (1880-1947) is revered by Africa’s only white tribe as one of its finest poets. He was a leading luminary of the “Second Movement”, the generation of language pioneers which produced the first poems of genuine literary value in Afrikaans immediately after the 1899-1902 Anglo-Boer War. His name is hardly known outside an estimated 10 million or so native speakers spread over South Africa and the now rapidly expanding diaspora of Afrikaner emigrants to the USA, Europe, Australasia and elsewhere. But blog hostess Jenny Bennett has such wide interests that I wasn’t too surprised by her tribute to such an exotic poet.

Inyoni

In memory of my sister, Deanne Seneschal Raszat, née Lewald, born 31 Jan. 1940 in Durban, South Africa; died 26 Sept. 1996 in Leimen-Gauangelloch, Germany

By Roon Lewald

Deanne

After cancer won a five-year battle for my elder sister’s life, my brother-in-law sent me a parcel of old studio recordings of Deanne’s singing recitals made by the South African Broadcasting Corporation (SABC/SAUK) between 1953 and 1958. Apart from a pile of yellowed newspaper clips and eistedfodd certificates, they were all that remained of the years when my mother’s coaching of Deanne’s voice propelled her into brief local prominence as a promising young singer. My dutiful elder sister had already been slaving away at her piano lessons for nearly five years when, at the age of 10, our Ma yoked her girlish lyrical soprano too into the musical harness of our parents, both of them singing teachers. At the age of 13, she piped German Lieder and Afrikaans liedjies into an SABC mike for the first time and was introduced on the nationwide “Young South Africa” programme as a young singer with a great future.