The courage to become naked

An amazing series of films are currently being shown at the Nouveau film theatres in the city. They are part of a project, which aims to bring some of the larger and famous opera productions, specifically those that are performed in the Metropolitan in New York, directly onto the doorstep of people who cannot be there and share in the production otherwise. Using the most modern audio-visual technology and equipment these operas are filmed and then broadcast directly from the theatre, making it possible for the viewer to enter first hand into the unique atmosphere of this magnificent opera house and to bask in the delight and wonder of the singing voice.

What is unique about these films is that they, through interviews with the artists and the production team, also take you behind the scenes. In this way you are able to meet the artists close up, to hear their voices, to share in their feelings and listen to their joys and anxieties.

One of the very special moments in one such film was when the interviewer managed to catch up with the French soprano Natalie Dessay just as she was coming off the stage after the first scene of Bellini’s divine opera, La Sonnambula (The Sleepwalker). Dessay is a small woman with a marvellous voice and a lively, charming personality. She has become famous and yet does not come across as conceited or snooty - to the contrary, she seems to be a delightful person who is friendly and unpretentious. Listening to her you feel as if she could have been a dear friend living just around the corner from you.

What I recall now is the wonder with which I saw and heard her for the first time; I was touched and impressed by these personal qualities. During this particular backstage interview she gave viewers a glimpse of the secret behind her art. Asked by the interviewer how she felt after the first scene and what it was like to sing Bellini’s moving lyrics, she answered that it was always thrilling, but never easy. To express the range and depth of emotions and feelings that characterises his operas, you have to let go of your own way of dealing with things, make yourself vulnerable and allow the music to touch, penetrate and open up the very core of your being. In her words, you have to risk becoming naked.

In this sense ‘becoming naked’ does not refer to that artificial form of physical exposure or exhibitionism, aimed at shocking or entertaining. Although the physical is never excluded - we are after all em-bodied beings - Dessay’s use of the phrase refers to something more profound. It designates the courage to be open, honest and vulnerable, to disclose one’s true feelings and emotions, even if it means to risk getting hurt, being misunderstood or rejected. It is to show and give more of yourself, to lower the mask behind which you were hiding - often in fear and anxiety. The effect, as with Dessay’s performances, could be a gain in authenticity. In short, becoming naked is to summon the courage to love freely and unconditionally, as did the woman who annointed Jesus with extraordinary, expensive perfume (John 12:3), thereby showing how she valued his worth.

In a highly competitive and individualistic society where fraud, violence, exploitation, suspicion and cynicism are rife, we often don’t achieve as much. This, however, does not deny the enduring importance of the challenge. The courage to become more naked, vulnerable and caring is not an embarrassment; rather, it is a sound asset, and it is key to a more healthy reconciled and human society.

Carel Anthonissen

Have you spoken to God about this?

It is not so difficult to be happy and to believe in God’s goodness and care when we are in control of our lives, when our circumstances are favourable and things are going our way. Then it is even easy to share our good fortune with others and to relate it to God’s loving care and kindness.
The real test comes when we lose control; when our good fortune or happy circumstances one day suddenly change or get out of hand; when like the waves in a stormy sea, life seems to turn against us, showing us its darker face and threatening to overwhelm and even to destroy us.
We don’t often consciously reflect on it, but most people of course go through such bad experiences some or other time - disappointment and disillusionment, the death of a loved one, the shattering news of loss or betrayal, the illnesses of old age, etc. These are all things that can plunge us into a state of anxiety and deep depression, a dark abyss of hopelessness. As with Peter in Matt 14:30 such experiences can overwhelm us, make us sink, especially when we did not expect them, when we were still counting on the sheltering and protective care of the Lord.
What do we do when this happens? How do we go about it when life, so to speak, shows us its darker side? Like Peter we are called to do what is really difficult, to deliberately turn our eyes away from our depressing circumstances and to focus on Him who is Lord - the One who walks on water (Matt 14:25) and calms the seas (Matt 8:26). The message is that however dark and rough our life may become, He is still in control - He is the risen One who is holding us and carrying us forward, our good Shepherd who promised to be with us even if we go through the deepest darkness (Ps 23:4).
In practice this amounts to nothing more than a simple act of faith - one in which we should discipline ourselves to become quiet, to breathe deeply and to lift our eyes and hearts again to God, even to kneel like a child and to start speaking to Him directly. Don’t think this act too small or insignificant. If you can wait patiently and persevere, this may just become the place from where you, sometimes unexpectedly, might gain new perspective, also the energy to deal with your pressing circumstances. Many believers through the ages can testify to this.
This week I was reminded again of how crucial such a small act of faith is. Complaining about a setback in my own life the other day, a friend who was listening, simply asked me this one question: “Have you ever spoken to the Lord about it? Have you ever brought it to God in prayer?”
Is it possible that we, who profess to follow the living Christ, can forget this?
Carel Anthonissen

Images from a scrapyard

I met Willie Bester when he was still a young, developing artist. At the time he used to take me along to the townships to meet his friends and to take some photos, which he used in some of his amazing collages. These collages, which he carefully constructed by shaping together different elements, mostly small pieces of metal, cardboard or paper, always against the backdrop of some gripping photos and newspaper headings, became Willie’s very special hallmark. They brought him international fame. Through them he documented the history, colour and liveliness of township life of the 1980s and 1990s. In these collages you could see and touch the bumpers of old lorries, double storied shacks, buzzing shops, corrugated roofs, rusted bicycles and moving trains.

Later when the painting and putting together of collages became almost second nature and less challenging, Willie switched to making smaller paintings. Through them he depicted at close range people of different walks in the township - an innocent child playing, an old man smoking a pipe, a woman toiling away at her daily tasks. Alongside these collages and paintings he also portrayed the dehumanizing effects of the political system of the day by building majestic structures, even whole laboratories, layered with guns, wheels, clocks and pipes and always a bible somewhere to remind us of how religion was often used to justify an intricate and oppressive ideology.

During the past few years Willie has been focussing more on creating life size sculptures, mostly from pieces of waste iron and car parts that he collects in scrap yards. People watching these rough but true to life images, are suddenly confronted by a rare talent - the ability to recognise in the jungle of scrap yard rubble the image of a growling dog, a gallant horse, a smiling harp player, a child carrying a gun, or a dignified old woman. This is Willie Bester’s rare achievement: to give new life to cast aside and forgotten waste by transforming it into lively images which, when closely observed, stir the heart and imagination, and leave you in awe and wonder.

Looking again at some of Willie’s startling images of child soldiers and missing children at a recent exhibition, I was reminded of the way God deals with us humans. In many ways our lives, though they do also carry reflections of God, so easily become skewed, depressed, out of hand, inhuman - to the extent that we suffer, lose our confidence, feel miserable, unworthy, dumped, almost like rubble on a scrap yard. How well do we all know this feeling, especially when we find that we repeatedly make the wrong choices, lose our discipline, give in to temptations and allow ourselves to be swept away by our darker and destructive impulses. Often only our belief in God’s constant grace, in God’s resurrecting and all renewing power, can save us. In the words of Paul: “You used to be in the darkness, but now in the Lord you are light” (Ephes 5:8).

Today we may count again on this amazing fact that God can transform what seems to be a mere piece of scrap into an image of beauty and wonder. Also, that bewildering piece of my life that I am experiencing and looking at right now.

Carel Anthonissen

The honesty shop

About 80 kilometers beyond Laingsburg in the heart of the Klein Swartberge and close to the Gamtoosdam there is an amazing little shop. It contains all kind of local products from preserved jams and fruit rolls to hand made articles like handbags and purses. For the tired traveller there is also the usual stock of coke and chocolates, but they are not the main items. These are all locally produced. However what makes the little shop particularly unique is not its local features, but its name and the special ethos it represents. It is called the honesty shop. Which means that there are no shop attendants, nobody to serve or look after you, nobody to check that you have paid. It is up to the customers to make their choice, check the price and then to leave the correct amount in a bottle put out for that purpose on one of the tables.

Many years ago while visiting Vienna in Austria I came upon a similar custom. There you could buy some of the city’s main newspapers on the street without anyone attending or checking. As at the Gamtoosdam you could take the magazine of your choice and then leave the right amount in an attached container. Apparently there are other cities and places in the world where the same principle is applied. The wonderful thing is that in all these places honesty appears to be a way of life, a spontaneous act, a honoured tradition. People don’t even think about or consider the possibility of cheating or stealing. They just do what is right and asked for.

While visiting the honesty shop at the Gamtoosdam some other visitors remarked that it is only the remoteness of the place and the fact that criminals don’t usually go there, which makes such an experiment possible. Perhaps this is true, but then still it remains a brave and extraordinary venture, especially in a country where we have come to expect the opposite. For me the honesty shop at Gamtoosdam, however small and obscure, today represents a tremendous sign of hope. While it remains a monument to courage and trust, it is also an appeal to seek and express the very best that is in all of us. In fact after taking the items of my choice I had this strange inclination to leave behind more than the asked price. And I was certainly not the only one. It truly shows us what faith and a little trust in our neighbour can do.

Carel Anthonissen

Consider your hands

Five years ago, at the Centre for Christian Spirituality, I made the acquaintance of a delightful nun, Sister Winifred O’Brien. She was one of The Little Sisters of the Assumption, and a team member at the Centre. As I recall, she worked as a caregiver for the carers of those ill with HIV and AIDS, which might account for the theme of her meditation one morning. She spoke movingly about the role hands play in people’s lives - their own and those of others - and then asked that we hold one another’s hands and lovingly explore them, touching and stroking every ridge, every callous, every knuckle thickened by age or arthritis. She encouraged us to put ourselves, in a manner of speaking, into someone else’s hands….

Our hands are programmed to do almost anything. They can comfort and nurture, create and clean and cook. They can sew and knit and write and hold and hug. They can be folded in prayer or cupped for a blessing. They can make a cross on the body - or on a ballot paper. But hands can also resist being held, they can hurt and hit or make an angry fist. They can withdraw coldly from this world of politics, poverty and pain.

I was reminded of Sister Win’s meditation when I heard Barack Obama’s summary of America’s new foreign policy: We will extend the hand of friendship to every nation which does not hold out a clenched fist…

How we use our hands, these miraculous, intricate, God-given objects, is our own choice. Their function is governed by our hearts and our minds, making them instruments of love or of discord. As always, on the eve of an election, it is fitting that we keep that in mind.

Cecile Cilliers

It is you!

In his recently published memoirs South African author Andre P Brink recounts his own journey through life and love. He attends specifically to what he had learnt about love, this most central aspect of our lives, over many years and through different relationships. He recalls one moment when he had what he called the most intense awareness of the other. In his own words: “I had never before experienced this!”

It happened when he went for a walk with his beloved one evening through the woods above Grahamstown. It became an unbelievable, almost magical night where everything started to glitter with the light of thousands of fireflies around them. At that moment they briefly stopped among the dark trees and then, with the moon above them, he took her face in his hands and whispered, just this one simple phrase: “It is you!”

Reading this moving episode from his life I realised that this little phrase, however simple and brief, does indeed suggest in a very powerful way, what love is really about. Because by saying this we say that we have recognised the other, that we are willing to accept and embrace him or her as a unique human being. Through this simple statement, which can also be seen as a confession, we acknowledge that the other has a face, a name, an own identity and that we fully grant and offer it to them - thereby creating the space in which they may also experience themselves as unique, special, human.

Is this not the very essence of the Biblical message? Is this not what God said to each one of us when he entered our world through Christ: “It is you”! Or in the words of Isaiah 43:1 “Do not be afraid, I will save you. I have called you by name, you are mine”.

May we hear these words again during this coming Easter. And may it inspire us to say the same to others. As we claim a space in which we can ourselves be recognised for who we are, we need to grant the same to each other. So many of our own difficulties could become less if we could start by seeing the other, recognising who they are, saying “It is you”! The people of our country, yes of the whole world, need to hear it constantly: “It is you”.

Carel Anthonissen

On the meaning of grafitti and the Dalai Lama

Not long ago Basil Manning, who was an exile in Botswana during the 1980s, gave me an interesting perspective on the role and meaning of grafitti. Apparently his son picked this up while studying in America where grafitti can be found on numerous buses, trains and the walls of certain neighbourhoods.

According to him the painting of grafitti represents a way of making your presence felt, of stating that you also have a place and a right in a particular place, neighbourhood or area, of saying: “I was here and I belong here!”

Of course, grafitti is often also used by hooligans to shock people by confronting them with their own vulgar and obscene impulses in public spaces. But in most instances, according to my friend, it is an act of protest, a way of standing up against the more powerful who, for whatever reason, discriminate against others by not even noticing them, thus excluding those they count as less significant from certain places and denying them freedom of movement and expression. In essence it is a bold statement (“Hello, I’m here as well, you know!”) and even an honest cry for acceptance.

Against this background, it is a great pity when these or similar signs of human struggle, such traces of the need and suffering of relatively marginalised people, are deliberately and blatantly ignored, scorned or carelessly removed. This was part of the sad discovery of the author Andre P Brink after his visit to the scant remains of the concentration camp at Dachau in the south of Germany - there is not even the slightest reminder left of the former inhabitants; their captors had not allowed, in fact severely punished, any attempt at scribbling a message how ever cursory and anonymous, thus one finds no initials scratched into wood or paint, no last message, no grafitti on a wall. This discovery not only drove Brink to tears, it also brought him to write in his latest Memoirs: Nobody should ever be denied the right to cry out: I was here. I am!

Is this not to some extent what happened to the Dalai Lama during the past week? The denial of a visa is also a denial of the opportunity to make any kind of contribution. Sadly, such limitation comes from people, from a government, who should have known better; who during a period of our own history also had to struggle for recognition, for a space in which to be heard, for the right to be. And now they have obviously forgotten, have denied that same right to a figure of undisputed integrity, a man who has become a symbol of peaceful resistance to unchecked, ruthless authority. And that in exchange for financial gain! How sad can it still become?

Carel Anthonissen