Fiona Des Fontaine

Wedding Day

2012-01-30T06:27:00.000-08:00

I had the privilege this weekend of conducting the wedding ceremony of Pam and Stef Myburgh.
It is the first time I have written their names like that. Previously it was Pam de Menezes of The Arrows, or Pam, my semi-adopted daughter, or "Tyde", Christie's nickname for her which has been universally used by her friends for years. Stef is another semi-adopted child, with the nickname "Einie", short for Einstein. Stef was given this name by Christie, who thrives on re naming those close to her. In this case it is very appropriate, because Stef is both extremely clever and inventive, and when he neglects to cut his hair, is as wild in appearance as his esteemed namesake.

The wedding itself was one of the more unusual I have attended or conducted, and had an eclectic collection of guests, affording a people watcher like me intense enjoyment. I will restrain myself, however, in case anyone recognizes who I am lampooning. The day began early for me. My house had been invaded days before by a tornado of bridesmaids. If that is not a collective noun, it should be. A camera crew from Top Billing, a popular lifestyle tv show in South Africa, arrived to set up on the lawn outside my bedroom deck. I had an excellent view of the bride and one bridesmaid doing their best to cope with wind blown hair, massively high heels, and a tiny flower girl replete in black tutu and leopard print accessories, intent on disappearing down the bank. This was just the beginning of a day that featured five bridesmaids and a bridesman (Pam's brother, whom she wanted as one of her attendants), each dressed in whatever they chose to wear. So we had a red polka dot dress, a blue and white fifties number, and....... It would probably be a good idea to look at some photos on Twitter that I posted last night!!! The bridesmaids were driven around the neighborhood AND the freeway, camera crew in tow, to pick fresh bouganvillea to be strewn along the aisle.

Meanwhile, back at the house of chaos, the make-up artist waited patiently to touch up her work. After the bouganvillea-picking episode extra blush, powder, and lip gloss would need to be applied.

At the precise moment I decided to leave for the church, the garage door refused to open or close! I couldn't have chosen a more inconvenient moment. Everyone except the make-up lady and I were out, and the camera crew and bridal party were due back in twenty minutes. Trying very hard to remain sane I drove, er, hastily, to the church, summonsed a reliable friend, thrust my keys at him ("Please go home and fix the garage door; the bridal party are due to leave any minute and the door won't close!"), and breathed deeply as I made my way to the wedding venue. Waiting at the front of the hall was the groom, looking remarkably calm and collected, his five groomsmen and one groomslady ( The Arrows' manager, who had happily accepted the invitation to be one of Stef's attendants, and who spent the time before the bridal party arrived darting from the bride's retinue to the groom's), each resplendent in different outfits.

Anticipation built as the guests took their places, and various people set up Skype and FaceTime on iPads and computers so that the ceremony could be watched in the UK, USA, Australia, Canada, and Bloemfontein (!!!) Any observant guest would have noticed a variety of drums and other instruments near the sound desk. What they didn't know was that the entire bridal party had been co-opted into playing during worship, and as there were four professional drummers, each of them played a drum of some kind. Even the non-musical bridesmaids were given shakers so that they could participate. But I have got ahead of myself. Chatting to the waiting guests I could tell that those among them who were not regular churchgoers were on their best behaviour because they were IN CHURCH. They looked uncomfortable, as if they weren't religious enough, and felt they wouldn't fit in. Until the wedding started!

Jazz music from the thirties, Benny Goodman's "Sing, sing, sing!" heralded the arrival of the bridal party, who danced their way to the front, first the bridesmaids and bridesman in twos, then an assortment of flower girls and boys with baskets of bouganvillea petals, and finally Pam and her father. Roars of applause, and the very unconventional ceremony was underway. The praise was uproarious, the obvious happiness and enjoyment of the couple, and the mood of celebration had to smash every stereotypical "church" atmosphere, and I could feel the non-church goers relax. This was not going to be what they dreaded, thank God! (And yes, there IS a God, and He is every bit as easy to be with as the nicest person you know.) When it was all done and they were pronounced husband and wife, the joy went to a new level. Pam and Stef had wanted to take communion alone, so everyone else left the hall just as a rickshaw arrived. When they appeared again to climb into the rickshaw amidst a positive blizzard of confetti, the party was well on its way.

As I watched and participated in this incredible day which I had helped them plan, I was struck again by how different God is from what we sometimes think. It was a shock to many people that the attendants were dressed differently, that Pam's brother stood with her, and Candyce stood with Stef. I am sure that many people put it down to Pam having an eccentric edge, or the fact that they are musicians, and therefore not like the rest of us. That is so sad, because God is into individuals. He loves the way He created us unique, and I think that enforced uniformity is demonic, not Godly. (Let me hasten to assure you that I am not talking about bridesmaids and groomsmen all dressing the same. That is beautiful and if it is what the bride and groom want, then that is exactly what they should have.) I am talking about a more insidious kind of uniformity, where you come to church and end up looking, dressing, and even praying like everyone else. God loves YOU. He made YOU unique. You are allowed to be yourself.

One of the best things that happened at this wedding was when I was approached by a guest who took my hands in his, struggled to speak, and eventually told me that he knew he needed to come to church. One of the main things that had kept him away was that he felt he would never fit in, but he knew that here he would be loved and accepted as he was. He came to church on Sunday and gave his life to Jesus.

It is not hard to allow people to be themselves. We come as we are and He accepts us, welcomes us, saves us, and then sets about changing us. But He doesn't change us into the latest trend in Christian circles, but into His own image. And that means we become the best version of ourselves it is possible to be. How thankful I am that He put me among a church full of like minded Christians who just love to see Jesus in those who come through our doors.

God bless you and I will see you at the marriage supper of the Lamb, if not before.

The Friday That Wasn't

2011-12-30T11:38:00.000-08:00

This is the 30th December 2011, and as such is the second to last day of 2011. Except in Samoa, which has chosen to eliminate this day altogether. I can't help but admire their chutzpah. I don't know how much you know about Samoa. As a rugby mad South African, all I have known about these Pacific Islanders is that they are fearsome combatants on a rugby field, and major intercession is called for in every world cup if the Springboks have to play them en route to the final. We never expect to lose to them, mind you, but we DO expect to be injured. Lots of us! By that I mean lots of our players. As an armchair rugby selector (like many of you), I make suggestions very loudly as I read the team selection in the paper, or more recently on my iPad. I make my team selection based on who we can afford to lose with a broken nose, arm, collar bone, or leg. "Don't select HIM you idiots! He is our best fly half and he can't kick with a broken leg. Some huge, vicious Samoan forward is going to jump on him and crush his kneecaps!" It doesn't help in the least when I see scriptures tattooed on bulging forearms as the team gustily sing their national anthem prior to going onto the field to commit mayhem. They are Christians too? My brethren? Lord help us all, but especially our South Africans.

I digress. As I was saying, my knowledge of Samoa has been fairly limited until now. Another digression. I don't know about you, but I am a positive mine of useless information. It is not by accident that my family are champion Trivial Pursuit players. We have all inherited a gene that causes us to Hoover up information and store it in the deep recesses of our brains, to be hauled out whenever we need to win an argument. I am in the throes of information overload and insomnia, feeling the need to read the news on every conceivable iPad news app I have, and then get an anxiety attack in case any interesting piece of breaking news has escaped me. For an entire week I had no wifi, and as I feared, I missed the news that a particularly colourful politician, Amichand Rajbansi, had died on Thursday, and I found out a full 24 hours late!!!! However, I am still alive, albeit mortified that I didn't find this out within minutes of the sad news breaking.

Back to Samoa! This delightful place has taken the brave decision to change time zones so radically that they have skipped an entire day. Today never was in Samoa. Here comes some of my newly acquired knowledge. 119 years ago some American traders persuaded the Samoans to align their islands' time with that of America. The problem with this was that it put Samoa nearly a full day behind neighbouring Australia and New Zealand. Local time up till 29th December 2011 had been 23 hours behind Auckland. But now it is one hour ahead. They are now the first major country to see in 2012. Samoans went to sleep on Thursday, 29th December 2011 and woke up on Saturday 31st December 2011. If your birthday was on the 30th, you missed it. Sorry!

There is something delightful about this decision to rewrite time. It is not the first time Samoa has made a change of some magnitude. In 2009 the same government made the decision to change the laws of the road and make everyone drive on the left instead of the right hand side of the road. This was potentially far more dangerous than the time change. It is one thing to get up and go to work because you think it is Friday, only to find the office closed, and a sign on the door reminding you that it is Saturday. Imagine reversing out of your driveway and swinging into oncoming traffic because you had a momentary lapse of concentration. I remember doing this in Dallas once. I had my own car, a Texas driver's licence, and the kind of lapse I have just described. I swung under an overpass onto the wrong side of the road, and though I lived to tell the story, I have sometimes wondered how many years were stripped from the lives of the terrified Texans I encountered as I narrowly escaped killing us all. The Samoan leader I watched on You Tube was cheerfully unperturbed. "We just ring a bell and tell them this is a new day, and then they all remember," he declared. Really? Ok, if you say so. The Samoans who were interviewed seemed to think that this change of time zone called for a massive party. The only people who were not ecstatic, it seems, were the Seventh Day Adventists. They were split down the middle as to whether the sabbath fell on Saturday or Sunday. I see a church split looming.

Here is another bit of fairly useless trivia which I have to share because I just found it out, so naturally I have to tell someone. This is not the first time an island nation has chosen to change time zones. In 1995 Kiribati moved Millenium Island in a similar fashion so that it would be the first place to see in the new century. If you have not previously known this interesting piece of trivia, don't feel bad! Nor did I know. I am now a minor authority on these islands but won't bore you with the details. Incidentally, Samoa's neighbour, Tokelau, has followed Samoa's example and changed time zones as well. The downside for some of the islanders is that certain bars were located on the western side of the islands, and their claim to fame was that their bars had the best views of the final sunset of the old year. Not any more!

All this has made me aware of our attachment to time. I think we all love New Year because it gives us a sense of new beginnings. It is our opportunity to put behind us the mistakes and heartaches of the year that is dying, and embrace the new year with revived optimism, hope, and faith. It is 33 years since I made the best new beginning anyone can ever experience, and that is being born again. Since then time has lost its grip on me. In its place has come awareness of eternity, and time has become of less and less importance to me. We truly are wasting away outwardly (not literally in my case as I have actually expanded), but we are being renewed inwardly. So I am able to relate to people of all ages, finding great wisdom and kindred spirits among some who are very young in years, and seeing incredible immaturity in some people who are a lot older. I long for that moment when time ceases and eternity embraces us. Until then I pray that your new beginning in 2012 will be God-filled, and that you will LIVE every day with joyous, reckless faith in the One Who created all of this.

And if Samoa can eliminate a day by a simple decision to declare Friday 30th December 2011 non-existent, it gives me hope that we can declare, with similar confidence that it will be universally accepted, that negativity and ingratitude and murmuring in the church will no longer exist.

Happy New Year. Speak to you again in 2012.
Love,
Fiona

Place on your rooftop for me?

2011-11-29T23:19:00.000-08:00

So here I am, lying in bed with flu, blog deadline looming, poodle asleep next to me. It is amazing how the worst of times can become the best of times for someone else. In this case, my bed of infirmity has become a bed of deep enjoyment for my dog, who revels in long days of inactivity from me, her faithful servant. She has me trained. Pavlov had it wrong. THEY train US, or at least they do if they are poodles and their "owners" are me. So I have been trained to interpret a variety of facial or body signals. I am so good at this that Coco seldom has to prod me by a verbal instruction, though persistent whining when she wants something has a lot to do with it. Rather than being tortured by incessant whines, I give in fairly quickly and give her what she is demanding, which is, of course, the whole point of nagging. For those readers rolling their eyes at this juncture, and dreaming of swift and well-placed kicks to a poodle butt, may I smugly remind you of something! I would rather be nagged by a dog than a person any day of the week.

The bible has a few heartfelt suggestions to men who live with nagging wives, or, as Solomon more delicately phrased it, a contentious woman. This, coming from the wisest man on earth, whose wisdom deserted him when it came to women, can be taken to heart. Seven hundred wives and three hundred concubines later, the man could have written encyclopaedias about nagging wives, but he restricted himself to a few piteous comments. Rather, Solomon plaintively declared, live in the desert, or on a corner of the rooftop, than share a house with a contentious woman. He bemoaned the fact that a nagging wife was worse than a dripping tap! I find this very funny, and have sometimes amused myself by imagining Solomon's dilemma. He wanted them! He married them! Or placed them in his harem! Then he tried really hard to find a quiet, reflective spot in one of his palaces. Ha ha ha, and another ha ha. I can imagine him being tracked down relentlessly by a bevy of belligerent women, all intent on getting him alone, to complain about his other, ahem, PARTNERS. I should think that some of them had to share palaces, maids, kitchens, and bathrooms, regardless of their husband's vast wealth. And if not, if instead there were seven hundred palaces for the wives, and a few dozen harems for the concubines, then the competition over size, location, and interior design would have been fuel for several thousand arguments. Poor, poor, stupid Solomon.

Then we have nagging men. Admittedly the bible has very little to say on this subject, and I am the first to admit it. I somehow don't think that men are exempt from the nagging gene. If they are, then some men I know have serious identity issues. I think it could be that the bible says that he who FINDS a wife finds A GOOD THING. So, if men are given the task of treasure hunting, and they come back to the palace with a seriously stunning package on the outside, but haven't picked up the package, shaken it, and listened carefully to how it rattles, then they deserve to run for their lives when the noise starts.

We also have nagging children, nagging parents, nagging bosses (please God, don't let me be guilty!!!), nagging co-workers, and so on, ad infinitum. It is interesting, though, that wives are the ones the bible warns against. And I think I have fathomed something about the female psyche that bears scrutiny. Women LOVE to rearrange furniture, makeover rooms or entire houses, study and replicate the latest fashion, and organize their families. A side note here. I am an inveterate furniture re-arranger, to the extent that Christie takes one look at the glint in my eye, says, "NO MOM! The rearranging demon is here and I am LEAVING!" and out the door she flies. Let it be said, however, that she suffers from the same compulsion in her own house. She just doesn't want to be dragooned into the role of furniture mover for me. I have been frustrated for the past few years, ever since Coco's eyesight failed, and she moves through the house on memory alone. So my furniture has boringly remained in its allotted place for some time.

Back to women's need to rearrange. I am convinced that women, as a gender, can be prone to taking the need to rearrange into their marriages. They are found, as a good thing, by a perfectly nice man, they marry, and settle down to live happily ever after. (Ha ha!) Then, after a period of time, determined only by their tolerance levels for boredom, they take a long look at the nice man they married, and think how much nicer he would be if they rearranged him just a bit. When I was a student at CFNI, Dennis Lindsay taught a class on marriage and family, and gave us an illustration I have never forgotten, and have used myself. He said that if we go shopping for a car, and decide to buy a VW Beetle (and this was in the day when they were basic runabouts, not the sleek, trendy creatures they are in 2011), even though you would have preferred a Mercedes, you accept what you have. You don't take your Beetle home, strip it, try to elongate its chassis, panel beat it and put in some new features, and try to turn it into a Mercedes. You accept the fact that you drive a Beetle. Yet we marry a Beetle, take it home, and try to panel beat it and make it over into the type of Mercedes spouse we would have really liked. This is applicable to both genders. Sadly, some girls born chubby, diet themselves into a shape they can never sustain to fit into the wedding dress of their dreams, then when they revert to type, their husbands crusade (read NAG) them to get back to wedding day slenderness even after a litter of children. So it works both ways.

Women! Accept your man the way he is. Men! Accept your good thing the way she is. Parents! Accept your children for who they are, and don't try to make them over into your image of what you would like them to be. Let God do His makeovers in us His way and in His timing. And we can all share our homes without looking for a rooftop or a desert.

And having said that, I am so grateful that my dog is happy with me the way I am, and all I have to put up with is being whined at for snacks or playtime. So we can happily co-exist on a queen-sized bed, though she admittedly has the larger portion.

Till next month, God bless. And love you. Fiona

THE PROBLEM WITH OSTRICHES.

2011-10-31T12:23:00.000-07:00

Here we are again on the last day of the month and my blog deadline looms. So I have been pondering a few things which I will attempt to put down before Emma's workday ends, and there is a repeat of last month's frantic attempt to finish before the stroke of midnight. Such are the perils of self-imposed deadlines.

I have mentioned before that I love creation, love God's word, and am an avid people watcher and eavesdropper. I amuse myself at odd moments by thinking of all these things in conjunction with one another. I find the prophets intensely fascinating, and God's way of dealing with them profoundly peculiar. I know we are ALL peculiar people, according to the bible, but some are distinctly more peculiar than others. I sometimes wonder if God, when He is looking for someone to use in a particularly strange way, searches for a spiritual weirdo. Ordinary people, if there is such a creature, could never do what He asks of His prophets.

Incidentally, I am of the opinion that "ordinary" is not an adjective to be used of any human on this planet. Extremely normal people have secret lives that would boggle our brains if we knew what lurked under the surface. Someone told me once that you can tell a lot about a person by looking at their books. It may alarm you, if you have any illusions about my normality, to hear that among my multitude of bibles, reference books, children's books, and an assortment of recipe books which fulfill a purely decorative function, I have an encyclopaedia of serial killers. Yes I do! And it is my morbid fascination with crime that leads me to the conclusion that the secret lives of ordinary people is of exceptional interest. Bank robbers, con men, kidnappers who keep their victims in hidden cellars in the suburbs, and serial killers, do not advertise their nefarious activities. Mostly they conduct their lives as regular workers and neighbours. When they are exposed, shock and horror are expressed by those among whom they have lived and worked.

But that is purely an aside! Returning to the prophets, I have great sympathy for the requirements placed on many of them by the God they lived to serve. Isaiah went around naked and barefoot for three years. Jeremiah was not allowed to marry, or even attend weddings or funerals. Hosea WAS allowed to marry, but his choice was limited to a prostitute. Ezekiel had to lie on his side for more than a year, and cook his meagre rations over a fire fuelled by cowdung. Their lifestyles served as object lessons to Israel, the nation loved by God to the point of desperation. God's burning love for people who would NOT love Him in return, caused Him to do everything which He, the Creator of all things, COULD do, to make them understand that they were heading for destruction. He used His prophets to speak and act in such a way as to demonstrate His will for Israel to return to Him and be preserved.

Bearing in mind these extraordinary human beings, and recalling that we are ALL non-ordinary, I have to confess that I loathe a woe-is-me attitude in anyone who is born again and still breathing. This is a challenge, sometimes, as a leader of a church. When I see self-pity masquerading as a need for counsel, I have to control myself. Often I vent to God. I tell Him how I would love to take some whining Christian and drop them in the middle of a refugee camp in Somalia, and say, "I'll pick you up in a few months and see if you STILL want to complain about your life, you ungrateful person!" I have to stifle an urge to drag a complainer forcibly into a squatter camp, and ask if they would like to exchange living conditions for a while. And then, as I am fuming to myself and God, He floors me. He asks me who I think I am to lose all vestige of patience with His sheep. My particular task, in His kingdom, is to be an object lesson of His love, just as the prophets were. I get to keep my clothes on, thank goodness, and to eat whatever I choose. I even get to attend weddings. But I also get to SAY things, and not to mince my words, for which I am eternally grateful. The prophets, and you, and me, are not required to be so "loving" that we sympathise with sin, or soften the truth about dying to self. We can tell it like it is. Dr Phil does not have a prerogative on being confrontational. The church has, in many instances, become so "loving" that she has lost her power to make scriptural demands on people.

And the ostrich? God is so HONEST that I think it behooves us to embrace and emulate His honesty. He made ostriches but He tells us plainly about their limitations. Go and read Job 39. God says that they are stupid and cruel, but they run fast! I don't know what that does to you, but it fills me with joy. I can imagine God creating all the birds, and then saying to one of the angels, "Check out the leggy one with the long neck and eyelashes! Just for fun I deprived it of wisdom, but boy, can it run!" So if you have limitations, know this - when God looks at you, He doesn't call attention to what you DON'T have going for you. He knows about your lack better than you. But He also knows what you DO have, and that is Christ in you, the hope of glory. So put THAT in the forefront of your mind, and thank God you are not an ostrich.

Enjoy this month, every day of it, and be thankful. God bless, Fiona

THE LAWS OF FIONA

2011-09-30T23:43:00.000-07:00

It is 10.30pm South African time as I begin to type this, but I console myself with the thought that in Hawaii it is 10.30am. So theoretically I could wait until 11 tomorrow morning, and it would still be 11pm, and thus still 30 September, in Hawaii. All this to prove to myself that I can delay blogging until tomorrow, and not miss my deadline. You see, I have to get my September blog in before October. You wouldn't want my iPad to turn into a Samsung Galaxy at midnight, would you? (For those of you who don't know about fruit wars, see a previous blog entitled " The Devil and i" . But now we have Star Wars to add to Fruit Wars! Apple, Berry, Galaxy, and many more wars to be fought and won by the mighty APPLE!)

It never fails to amaze me how prone we are to legalism. Please do not misunderstand me. I have no intention of wading into the quicksand of the Law/Grace debate at this time of night. I have to let it be known, though, that in my humble but accurate opinion, a great deal of the teaching on this highly contentious subject shows very selective use of scripture. Oh dear, I seem to be dipping my typing finger, (singular), into the quagmire, so will pass on swiftly. The legalism I am referring to, to which I am prone, is the self-imposed kind.

I don't know about you, but I know about myself when it comes to the laws I pass, live by, and prosecute should I ever violate my own code of behaviour. It matters not a whit to anyone but me that this blog should be completed in the next hour. I am also well aware of the fact that once I have completed it, I shall email it to Emma, with an urgent request to post it before midnight. This is utterly unreasonable, because it is Friday night, Emma is young, pretty, and single, and I am fairly certain that she is not lurking at her computer, watching the seconds tick by, wondering when her boss's blog is going to arrive. She is much more likely to be OUT at movies, or IN at movies, eating popcorn, secure in the knowledge that her workday ended many hours ago. So why am I frantically racing the clock to meet the deadline? Well, for one, I am not a lawbreaker! I made this law, and my goodness, I am going to stick to the law, even if it means propping my eyes open with one hand, while typing with the other! Or typing with one of the fingers of the other hand, to be more accurate. Secondly, I can sleep with a clear conscience, knowing I have beaten the clock. Like Paul, I have run the race and finished! I have blogged before midnight turns September into October. So I can sleep the sleep of the righteous. If this blog is not posted till October, it is not my fault!!! It is Emma's fault! Hallelujah and amen!

I seriously doubt if any of you could live in my kingdom without breaking the law. Good grief, I can't, and I make the law of my kingdom. These laws govern teeth brushing, hand washing, makeup removing, dishwasher packing, bible reading, journal writing, towel folding, sock pairing, pillow arranging, order of food eaten, (keep the best mouthful for the last), etc etc etc. Stop shaking your head and looking smug. You live by your own laws, even if those laws require you to NEVER hang up your clothes or brush your teeth before bed.

Some of my laws are in serious need of revision, but I am a hardliner when it comes to keeping the law. So I get back from an exhausting 30 hour trip and would love to get into a shower and go to sleep, leaving the unpacking till next day. "Are you INSANE?" barks my inner law-enforcement voice. "You will unpack NOW! Don't you know that in this kingdom we demand obedience to the letter of the law? And that law says only slobs sleep in the midst of a mess. Get up and DO IT NOW!" Very occasionally I will feebly try to rebel. In an apologetic whiny voice I speak to the law enforcer, conscious before I begin my argument that I am going to lose. "I am very tired and my back is sore," I explain. "It would be WISER to have a hot bath and go to sleep, and then I will feel fresh to do it in the morning.". " WHAT?" bellows the law enforcer. "Have you lost your mind? You won't be able to sleep. Close your eyes, and your eyelids will become transparent. The darkness will become light. Visions of strewn clothing, clean mixed with dirty, shoes without their partners, cell phone chargers sliding under the bed and disappearing for all eternity.........". "STOP!" I scream. "Don't torment me before my time! I'll unpack. Now! Please leave me in peace." And hours later, smugly satisfied that I have kept the law, I collapse in a state of absolute exhaustion. Another victory for THE LAW OF FIONA! You may now applaud.

I returned from Israel on Tuesday, and went through this exact ritual. While I was there, I observed something of true religious legalism, and found it utterly fascinating. Our hotel observed Shabbat, which meant that the lifts stopped at every floor so that no observant Jew had to break the Sabbath laws by "working on the Sabbath" by pushing the buttons in the lift. However, the automatic revolving doors into the hotel were switched off, so that you had to push them manually to go through. (There was an open door next to the revolving doors though.) This intrigued me. Surely pushing a door open was work? It certainly took more effort than to have it open automatically as you approached. A fellow guest asked an Israeli why the automation was turned off when Shabbat started. The answer, I guess, made a certain amount of sense, in the same way that unpacking when you are exhausted makes sense. As you approach the door, the Israeli man explained, it senses that you are approaching, and starts to move. So, actually, you are working because you set in motion a revolving door. Some scholar, somewhere, decreed that this is work, so every revolving door in Israel ceases to operate automatically at sunset on Fridays. Mazeltov!!

I love the freedom that we find in God. "He has shown you, o man, what is good, and what the Lord requires of you; to do justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with your God." Micah 6:8. And so He smiles at us as we strive to keep our own laws of discipline, hygiene, diet, exercise, cleanliness, punctuality, and every other area of life. But I think His smile disappears, and a celestial disapproval dawns, when we take the laws of our kingdoms, frame them, demand that the rest of humanity live by them, and decry anyone who dares to live by a different set of rules to our own. (You do know, don't you, that I am talking about personal preferences? I am not talking about His Word, which contains His requirements. We would be VERY stupid to think that we can ignore or disobey His clearly expressed commands to live the way He expects from those bearing His Name and His image.)

It is now 11.50 pm on Friday 30 September 2011. Over to you Emma! You may post congratulations to me on twitter.

Good night and lots of love,
Fiona.

REALITY SHOWS AND OTHER EMBARRASSMENTS

2011-08-31T09:41:00.000-07:00

I have come to the conclusion that the world is divided into two groups of people, those who love tv reality shows and those who despise them. Actually no! Let's make that three groups: those who love reality shows, those who hate reality shows, and those who want to be IN a reality show. Think me treble-minded if you like, but I am in a fourth group, and you may become a member of my group if you like. We are members of the LOVE SOME HATE SOME TV REALITY SHOW WATCHERS!!

My personal hates include the Jerry Springer type brawl'n'curse'n'rip your opponent's hair out while the audience bays lustily for blood type of show. Included in this genre of voyeuristic exhibition of human degeneracy are those shows which "reveal" who slept with whom behind someone else's back, who is secretly engaging in nefarious activities, and who is about to undergo a gender transforming surgical procedure, often on camera. The fact that these shows have huge followings doesn't say much for the theory of evolution!

By contrast, and even though I know that the "reality" in these shows is a matter of selective editing, I confess an addiction to shows like Survivor. I am fully aware that the cast of sixteen characters is chosen to be exactly that, i.e. A CAST in a show, but this doesn't deter me. Some unfortunate blonde has been chosen to be the bimbo, especially if she has had the brains to make money from her considerable beauty, and become a professional model while still young enough to profit from her genetic windfall. She will have her utterances on the show edited so as to make every remark sound totally inane, even if this means cutting her answers in half. I can imagine it.
HIDDEN CAMERAMAN: "What do you think will happen if a storm blows up and you haven't built your shelter yet?"
BLONDE BIMBO: "At this stage of the game I imagine it would be every man or woman for himself or herself. I may try to find a cosy cave and see if I can find shelter there. It would be better than spending the night in the open, getting drenched, but I am sure the whole team will come up with a solution."
RESPONSE ON SHOW: "Every man find cosy shelter...." accompanied by a close-up of cleavage, and if possible, a smile in the direction of THE HUNK!

THE HUNK may or may not have a degree in chemical engineering, while in his spare time he trains for ironman competitions. He has very white teeth, a six-pack envied by every other male on the show, and considerable charm. He is also THE ALPHA MALE, and is therefore a threat to his entire tribe. Naturally, in this "reality show", these two are cast in predetermined roles, and like pawns on a chessboard, they are manoeuvred into playing them out for the viewing audience. My point in this is that a "reality show" is anything but!

Nevertheless I am an avid watcher of Survivor, The Amazing Race (with its own cast of pre-assigned characters), and all the talent search shows on offer. Along with millions of others, I watched reruns of the UK show BRITAIN'S GOT TALENT, when Susan Boyle stunned the judges, the audience, and the watching world with her rendition of "I Dreamed a Dream" from "Les Miserables". I am not sure what gripped us more; the soaring, heavenly notes proceeding from the mouth of a frumpy, 47 year old Scottish woman whom everyone expected to embarrass herself, or the pained expressions of judges Simon Cowell or Piers Morgan giving way to open-mouthed astonishment, and then onto a standing ovation. The fact that she didn't emerge as the winner is not important. She has become a worldwide singing sensation, like Paul Potts before her. He was the shy and very unprepossessing salesman who startled the world with his beautiful operatic aria the previous year. Susan Boyle and Paul Potts have had their teeth and hair expensively fixed, and have been dressed by society's finest. Their outward appearance is now much more compatible with the sounds emanating from their extraordinary larynxes, and sows' ears now look a lot more like silk purses. But the true joy of reality shows is epitomized by these two precious people. No one expected to find anything worthwhile in those two vessels, but indeed the pearls were there in the oysters, waiting to be discovered.

But the prize of all shows is POP IDOLS. In South Africa we watch AMERICAN IDOL, and as if that were not enough to enthrall or horrify, we have our very own SOUTH AFRICAN IDOL to keep us entertained. And entertaining it is! I have friends who find it humanly impossible to watch the early rounds, because they are considerably more compassionate than I am. For the uninitiated, tens of thousands of hopefuls fill stadia in several cities, often spending nights in the open air, all in hope of getting past the audition stage, and into the top hundred or so singers invited to HOLLYWOOD WEEK if they are in America, and some other less iconic venue in South Africa. After a week of torture, as one by one they fall by the wayside, the final ten or twelve are selected by the judges to be paraded on tv as the possible NEXT AMERICAN/SOUTH AFRICAN IDOL. At this stage the viewing audience spend vast amounts of money voting each week to keep their favourite in the competition. My own view is that although it would make the sponsors a lot less money, it would be more fair to vote OFF the worst singer each week. As it stands, whoever has the widest or richest fan base wins the most number of votes. Eventually someone, and not always the best singer, emerges victorious, and a new star is born, only to be eclipsed by next year's instant celebrity.

The reason my compassionate friends cannot watch the early rounds is because to make the show interesting, the fiendish tv moguls parade before our eyes and ears the most deluded of all human beings. These are people who have no idea that they can not only NOT sing, they should be held criminally liable for even trying, let alone spending many hours waiting to audition, confident that they ARE, indeed, the NEXT IDOL. Sounds that defy my limited ability to describe, issue forth from a variety of human throats, and our response to these sounds is what separates us, the viewers, into one of the groups I alluded to in my first paragraph. The group that hate reality shows squirm with embarrassment and compassion. I, on the other hand, roll around with amusement, often pausing the tv in order to run off to find someone to share the moment with me. I am really sorry if that seems cruel to you. It isn't! Any person who confidently sings into a microphone on camera deserves whatever reaction they get. I am fully aware of what I sound like, so I speak with full authority when I say that! Added to this lunacy is the fact that many of these deceived individuals exhibit a confidence in their ability that defies reason. I have often wondered if their family and friends are deaf or equally deluded to allow them to enter at all. Many contestants, in their eagerness to stand out from the crowd, dress in outlandish get-ups that add to the freakshow carnival which is what the early round auditions comprise.

So I was thinking of my life, and how God sees me, as opposed to how I see myself, or how the world sees me. Or you! I live amazed that God would view me as any more than a very untalented and deluded Idols contestant, as I paraded my ignorance of truth confidently before the world, asserting that reincarnation and other lies were the answer to life's questions. The more deceived I was, the more vociferously I declared my own wisdom. I don't know what you did before you got to know Him. I just know that while the world watched and waited for us to make utter fools of ourselves, He turned to His Son and said, "Wait till you hear THIS voice come out of that unlikely looking creature, and you will know what you died to redeem!"

I am so glad He saved you and me and every other hopeful audionee, aren't you?

EAVESDROPPING AND OTHER PASTIMES!

2011-07-30T13:25:00.000-07:00

I am an unashamed and unabashed people-watcher and eavesdropper. I have been known to lean so far backwards at a restaurant in my efforts to listen in to the neighbouring table's conversation, that I have almost overbalanced and become an unexpected and uninvited intruder at their lunch. I make no apologies for this. People interest me, and if they choose to discuss topics that fascinate their fellow diners then they should expect people like me to listen in. I am convinced that the world is full of listeners- in, but most people won't admit their proclivities to be inquisitive. I, on the other hand, will. So if you want to discuss your plan to murder your mother-in-law, or your friend's secret plastic surgery, or how you successfully scammed the tax man in my vicinity, let it be known that I will be listening.

I think that this could stem from growing up in a small town where everybody knew everybody else's business. Added to this was the small town telephone exchange. I am very well aware that anyone born in the last forty years probably has no idea what I am talking about, so let me enlighten you. The telephone exchange was something akin to the reception desk at a large corporation. A room at the local post office housed the exchange. Every telephone line in the town was routed through this central place. The operators, known as "the exchange" , answered every call and connected the caller with whatever number they asked for. So you would pick up the telephone at home, actually turn a handle, and wait for the voice to answer, "Number please; nommer asseblief?", whereupon you asked for the number you wanted to be put through to. Yes, it was the dark ages, but stop sniggering! We only got tv in South Africa in 1976, and that for only two hours a night, so we entertained ourselves by watching the test pattern for the half hour or so before the programming began.

I digress. Back to the exchange! Now that you have stopped grinning, let me continue. It was a well-known fact that "the exchange", and by that we meant the operator, listened in on conversations. People were known to deliberately fabricate rumours for the sheer entertainment value of knowing that "the exchange" was swallowing it hook, line, and sinker!! Added to this was "the party line." This invention of hell arose because there weren't enough lines to go around, so several people shared lines. The idea was that each house on a party line had a coded ring, so in theory, only the person who was supposed to pick up the call should answer. Oh, really? In a small town inhabited by people who HAD to know their neighbours' business, that horse was dead in the stalls. You could actually hear excited breathing at any particularly interesting snippet of information, as the listener forgot to cover the mouthpiece with her hand! Who got engaged, who was pregnant, who had been taken to hospital, who had a new car - "the exchange" and the party-liners were a mine of information!!

Our lives were open books, read by all. I have fond memories of some of the eccentric characters who populated my world. One such individual, and I use that word advisedly, was an elderly woman by the name of Mary Fenwick. Mary was in her late fifties or early sixties, but with no make-up, long, wispy, greying hair worn long or in a mostly undone bun, she seemed more like a hundred years old to a young child. She was a devout Anglican, in charge of the flowers, the tea, and sundry other self-imposed chores in the beautiful old stone church across the road from our house. My family only ever attended this church when any of us were christened or married, but I encountered Mary daily because the primary school was easy to reach if one took a short cut through the church grounds. My brother and I fell foul of her on a few occasions because we both, to our adult shame as we are now both bird lovers, shot birds with our air rifles! Mary chased us, wispy hair flying as the hair pins anchoring her bun lost the battle and fell out, shouting very un-Anglican threats at us as we fled.

But one thing consumed Mary, whom we had been taught to address courteously as "Miss Fenwick", and that was marriage! She had never married, and this was an ISSUE!! No one needed to listen in to her telephone conversations to find this out, because Mary was frank and forthright in her denunciation of any widow or divorcee who dared to remarry. "Blasted woman!" she declared to me one day as I was making my way past the church door, where Mary, arms full of flowers, her face more flushed than normal, nearly knocked me over. I gathered that I, at age ten, was not the blasted woman referred to, so I politely waited for the rest of the imprecation. Sure enough it burst out of her. "Blasted, blasted woman! This is her SECOND husband. Why can't she leave them for the rest of us?" Guessing that this was a rhetorical question I edged away, leaving her to enter the church and arrange her flowers for the bitterly resented blasted woman's second wedding!

Mary was only one of the highly individual people in our town. My own godmother declared my name to be Genevieve Antoinette at my christening, requiring a speedy intervention from my mother, so that I can now write Fiona Patricia instead of my godmother's choice of names. I honestly don't know WHAT my parents were thinking to choose this woman to be my godmother. She was slightly more odd than Mary Fenwick, and her father, a highly educated man, was the town drunk. He attended the local Methodist church, usually inebriated, held his hymnal upside down, but managed to sing all the correct words with great gusto. The only problem was that he occasionally helped himself to the offering as the plate went past, and sometimes encouraged the boarding school children in the church to "Sing, you little blighters, sing!!"

No doubt I could reminisce all night about the sundry characters whom I encountered in our small town, but will desist. I must say that this upbringing instilled in me my deep fascination with people, and I can never be bored. To this day I watch strangers and friends alike with great interest. It is a huge pity, in my opinion, that we are so wrapped up in technology that we are more absorbed in our cell phones than with real, live people, and thus we miss out on the gloriously varied people whom God has placed in our own individual spheres of life. It would be a wonderful idea to have a techno-free sabbath once a week. Just imagine the entertainment in actually watching and listening to people with no distraction!

And the point to all of this? Yes, I do have a point. God is intensely interested in us. He leans down from His throne to listen in on our conversations, even those we have with ourselves. He picks up every call, because we have no private lines. He does this because He wants to know every detail, not because He is a celestial eavesdropper, but because He loves us so much that even if we are a Mary Fenwick, agonizing over our single status, or an oddball trying to palm off our favourite names on someone else's child, or a drunk singing hymns from an upside down hymnal, we are loved by the only One Who truly knows and understands us. So, as we go about living our lives, may the words of our mouths and the meditations of our hearts be a joy to our heavenly Eavesdropper.

Here's to you, in all your wonderful uniqueness.

God bless, Fiona Patricia Des Fontaine. (Thankfully not Genevieve Antoinette Des Fontaine)

THE DEVIL AND i

2011-07-14T07:17:00.000-07:00

No, dear blog reader. The title of this blog does not contain a typographical error! The i is indeed lower case because it is not about me (as in "I"), but i as in iPhone, iPad, and any other gadget prefixed by i! At this point I need to confess that I am typing this on my brand new iPad 2, so am fully qualified to expound on the iniquity of i-anything. My name is Fiona and I am an iPad addict. Please help me! At this point I can hear a chorus of sympathetic "Hello Fionas" from fellow addicts. For the rest of you, those who are free, let this be a cautionary tale. You can never say you weren't warned.

For years I taught that when Adam was forbidden to eat from a particular tree in the garden of Eden, it was not a specific fruit tree. Indeed it was the fruit of the knowledge of good and evil that was prohibited. With scorn I listened to preachers speak of Eve eating an apple, marvelling at their lack of Biblical accuracy. Well, it is 2011, (and I missed the deadline for my June blog so will double blog in July for conscience sake, as I have not yet converted to Catholicism - see SHARKS HAPPEN if you don't know what I am talking about ), and I have changed my mind. I now realise those apple-in-Eden guys had an edge on the rest of us.

How is that you may ask? Have I entered into a realm of deception which comes from watching too many Crime and Investigation shows and conspiracy theory movies?

No! I have come to believe that the devil heard all the apple preachers and developed a diabolical idea to enslave the human race once more. Sin had already gripped mankind! How to capitalize on that? Voila!!! APPLE!!!! And so the computer magicians, demonically inspired, created APPLE, and a new level of sin and slavery entered in the 20th century. As the end times approach, new and improved methods of bondage are released annually. What a coup!

Think of it. Wars have erupted between erstwhile friends, who now trade insults on Twitter on the relative merits of berry and deciduous fruits. All the fruit wars have seen a great escalation in another kind of fruit, which is strangely called FLESH and not meat. The fruits of the flesh have grown orchards as the fruit wars are waged. Pastors' getaways (at least ours) are reduced to name-calling and one- upmanship. ( I heard a joke once that said soccer is a game played by 22 men and after 90 minutes the Germans win. Our personal inter-church fruit wars continue for days, weeks, months, and Hilton Greig wins!)

Envy, jealousy, factions, pride, hair pulling, insults, nose twitching..... Oh dear, I could go on and on, describing the hand to hand and word by word warfare, instigated and sustained by............. APPLE!!! The superiority of APPLE over every and any other form of gadget has been debated and proved beyond any doubt. They have even coined a term for it : if you use APPLE or i anything you have THE COOL FACTOR!

So this is my revelation. It is no coincidence that this new method of slavery has echoes of Eden. Look at it, says the devil! Can't you see how wise and wonderful and powerful you will be if you own one. You MUST taste it and see how delicious it is. You NEED one, and then you can gloat over all the losers who aren't cool like you. Think how you will feel with an iPad 2 instead of an iPad 1! Yes, I said, and bought one. Am I thrilled? Oh yes indeed!

Isn't it amazing how enticing sin can be? Of course I am not talking about my new iPad 2. That was all tongue in cheek, which I really hope you know, especially as I also use and enjoy my Blackberry Torch and my PC. But if the devil DID offer you a bite of something forbidden, it might be very hard to resist. And that, dear friends, is how sin works.

Till next time, be blessed.
Fiona

SHARKS HAPPEN!

2011-05-18T23:42:00.000-07:00

Here I am sitting in the lounge at O.R. Tambo Airport, listening to a motley collection of languages and accents, distractions on every side, attempting to write a blog before guilt overwhelms me and I become a Roman Catholic for the sheer relief of doing penance. This is not meant as an insult to any of my Catholic friends! The absolute light-hearted joy of guilt relief from being granted absolution is very appealing at this moment. You will notice that I have not actually sinned by being late with my blog yet again, so I do not need divine forgiveness. THAT I am able to do due to much practice. No, it is the horrible awareness of the media department, Emma in particular, flipping the pages of their diaries day after day, watching May creep closer to June, with NO BLOG in sight. So I have been prodded by my conscience, as obnoxious as nails on a blackboard, into putting index finger to iPad!

On my way to Joburg from Durban, I read something in the newspaper that gripped my imagination. Reading a newspaper on an aeroplane is not for the fainthearted. Imagine being squeezed into a narrow seat next to an overflowing neighbour, tray table laden with an assorted collection of food, condiment packets, bottles, glasses and plastic cutlery, cunningly encased in plastic wrappers that defy logic, strength, and skill to open so the contents can be extricated, and you will realize that only the vaguely insane will add a broad leaf newspaper to the mix. But of course I HAVE to do it every time I fly. Who knows what juicy piece of trivia I could miss should I choose to forego the offer of a free paper.

Sure enough I would have missed this story. Two fishermen in a ski boat, 15km off Zinkwazi, were fishing from their 6 metre boat, intent on enjoying their day. The boat was powered by two outboard motors. One of the men had just moved from where he had been seated between the motors, disentangling his line, when a 5 metre great white shark leapt (? Do sharks leap!), out of the ocean, smashed down on their boat and began chomping into the fibre glass between the motors where the man had been seated. It continued to attack the boat for a while before swimming off to attack another boat in the vicinity. This is almost enough to put one off the joys of fishing, but not quite.

What has this to do with anything? Well, a couple of things! For one, sharks happen! At any given moment of tranquillity, we can hear the smashing of jaws, and it is very comforting to know that angels are on guard. So we can continue to fish for fun, and not allow one bad shark to make us live in suspicion of every shadow in the ocean. And second, it sobers me to know that one day something far worse than a great white is going to smash into this world, and there will be no escape. So get as many people as you can into YOUR boat as you can.

God bless you and happy fishing,
Fiona

PRONE TO CLONE.

2011-04-19T22:51:00.001-07:00

So it is past the middle of April, and my blog is late. Sorry blog public! Grace seems to be a hot topic, so try extending some to an overworked blogger. At least you will be right on trend and will be striking a blow against legalism. That makes me feel so free. Who said I had to write a blog each month anyway?

I have recently returned from a week's holiday, during which I had time to relax. That is if you count sleeping till all hours, staring at the ocean, and eating in the room so that you don't have to wear anything remotely respectable as relaxing. I do! If I can't spend a week snorkelling on some reef, or being driven through gorgeous country, or visiting Vienna or Paris or Venice, then I would just as soon stay in my room all week and do nothing. And watch 24!!!! This was courtesy of Tasha, my niece, who first got me addicted to The West Wing, and now to the adrenaline gushing 24 hour day of Jack Bauer. If you don't know what I am talking about, I salute you. If you do, say with me, "My name is Fiona (fill in applicable name) and I am a tv addict!" I am of the opinion that we need exorcisms, not deliverance!!

President Bartlett and Jack Bauer aside, I spent some time watching and thinking about people. "My name is Fiona and I am a people-watching addict!" People fascinate me. I walk my dog around the suburb where I live, which, in the South African context, is a safe thing to do. I freely confess to praying every time I set out with Coco, that we are protected from other dogs, particularly Rottweilers, insane drivers, snakes, and last on my list, people. By people I am referring to anyone brandishing a firearm or knife, and not the normal folk I meet during these afternoon strolls. I would love to have you picture me power walking the neighborhood, with my poodle cantering at a good pace in front of me, but honesty compels me to tell the truth. We stroll, so that Coco, who is 14 and has only her sense of smell fully functional, can investigate each and every scent along our route. ( Another time I will tell you what happened when Tasha, who is an exercise addict, took my two geriatric dogs for a "walk", brought them back barely alive, and told me they were the most unfit dogs in Durban. I reminded her that they were 91 and 105 in dog years and could hardly be expected to sprint up and down hills with her! Cadbury has since expired, with his legs no longer functioning, and Tasha has not been asked to walk the dog again! )

Back to people-watching. These strolls provide an endless form of entertainment for me. One afternoon, as I was walking past the tennis courts on the corner of my road, I met an elderly couple whom I have only ever seen that one time. The lady was diminutive and her husband tall and lanky. As we were about to pass each other with the obligatory smile and greeting, she darted off into the grounds of the court playground, plopped her little behind on the swing, and blissfully began to swing, while her husband looked on tolerantly. "I can never resist a swing," she called out happily to me. "She will never grow up!" he told me. I walked on with a sense that there really was something heartwarming that I had just witnessed. On the same road, but on another occasion, I was hailed from inside a garden by yet another elderly woman with her hair in an untidy bun, wisps of hair all over her face. She had a German accent, and almost before I knew what was happening, was in her house, Coco on my lap, being told stories about her life that you probably wouldn't believe, but which, I am convinced, were genuine. She is a real, live French Comte's widow, and is still legally a countess. She is very eccentric, has tame hadedas which she feeds with saucers of milk, ( yes, really ), and is a poetess.

These are just two of hundreds of encounters with people of various races whom I encounter on these walks. ( I also encounter wildlife, most notably monkeys, which are equally entertaining, especially when they perch along the top of the tennis court netting, and curiously watch the game ). The thing that continually intrigues me is that each person is unique and individual and idiosyncratic. We are an expression of God's creativity, and each of us is an expression, in some way, of who He is. How terrible, then, that we are so prone to clone. The entire fashion industry is built on the premise that we are not individuals at all, and that in order to fit in, we have to follow the latest trend slavishly. How else would the fashion empires survive? We buy and read magazines to discover whether sunglasses this season are big or bigger, whether grey is the new black, and whether bling is hot or not!

This is unfortunate when it comes to fashion, but tragic when it comes to Christianity. Follow fashion by all means, even if you are intelligent enough to know that someone, somewhere, is deciding how you should dress and what label is "in" enough that you won't be " out" if you don't wear it. But please, please, please, don't let anyone turn you into their clone by causing you to adopt the latest and trendiest church fashion statement. We are the ones who are prone to clone. He doesn't do that. He made you as a divine original, and YOU reflect HIM best by discovering who that is and being unashamedly you. And, by the way, the bible does not need any fashionably new way of looking at truth.

Enjoy your next sprint or stroll through your neighbourhood!

God bless you,
Fiona

The Weird World of the Emoticon!

2011-03-09T23:23:00.000-08:00

Today is the day that we release our new-look website. Even typing that makes me feel strangely superior, as if I have truly become a twenty-first century techno whizz. I have entered the world of website design, animation, green screen, and emoticons! For the sadly uninformed among my readers, the unfortunate individuals who don't know the intricacies of communicating emotions through the medium of tiny faces on a cell-phone, all I can say is read the rest of this blog. But let's talk green screen first, shall we?

The web page was a collaborative effort, and the idea of entering the church through a sketched door, I am really happy to announce to all and sundry, was mine. The thought that I would step OUT of the sketch and happily invite the browsing public to enter, was not mine, and sent me running for cover. I was dragged back into the process by a sadistic and persuasive bevy of creative beauties, and convinced, against my better judgment, that it would be a breeze! Really, I said. Yes, really, they assured me. But I would need a green screen. A green screen, I queried. Yes, I was told. ALL I had to do was get dressed in black(!!), do my hair and make-up with a little more care than normal because of the lights, and we would be ready to roll.

I arrived on time, dressed to order, to discover a very literal, VERY GREEN draped curtain, a VERY bright spotlight, a camera, and an enthusiastic audience of seven. Right, they said, walk out in front of the green screen, into the centre, look at the camera, and speak. So I did! Then I was told to walk off the way I had come. That was that, until I heard the dreaded words, "That was great. Now can you do it again?" I think I screamed! The entire thing was an ad lib! Could I do it again? NO!!! Well, after I did it again, I left, breathing out verbal emoticons! You thought I had forgotten, didn't you?

Ah, the weird and wonderful world of the emoticons! I discovered smiley faces with the glee normally only felt by bargain hunters on the first day of a Boxing Day sale. I couldn't believe the ecstasy I felt at being able to insert a happy little smiley face into an SMS. How FANTASTIC to be able to convey, via this cute animation, that I was smiling at the recipient of my message. From that time on I judged the value of a cellphone by its smiley face variations. I found a smiley wearing sunglasses, one with a sad downward-turned mouth, an angry smiley, (there's an oxymoron for you), and a host of other emotions. And then, dear reader, I discovered that these "smileys" are actually called "emoticons"!

Imagine a world in which we communicate our depth of feeling for friend, family, or foe, by selecting, with deliberation, which cute image with which to punctuate our message!! I am the proud owner of a Blackberry, though, to be perfectly honest, I would prefer an iPhone. (But that is another conversation entirely.) This means that, by using the emoticons available to me, I can roll my eyes at you, flutter my eyelashes, wink, wear a party hat, roll around laughing, or tell you to speak to the hand. All this is well and good, but it is fraught with peril. I have fluttered my eyelashes inappropriately at someone, simply by a slight slip of the finger! I have answered a serious question with a frivolous face! And invariably I only discover my mistake too late to rectify it. My Blackberry has a dent from being repeatedly banged against my forehead.

And then, of course, we have the question of how many Xs to put at the end of a text. Is 2 too many? What about 1 x AND a smiley? None at all seems too emotionless.

Which brings me to my point, and I DO really have one. God will never misread my emoticons. He knows I love Him, even if everything about me portrays something different, He knows me. He knows I have a permanent kissing smiley tattoed on my heart, a beaming happiness that I am His. He sees the heart, the bible says, but I like to think that He Who placed the emotions in us, doesn't need us to stress over our limited ability to convey to Him what we really mean or feel. He always sees the kiss of our hearts. So let's relax, shall we, and wear our party hats to worship.

And please, come in and browse through our church. You are most welcome. Xxxx

:)

Hadedas, bats, and other random thoughts.

2010-05-28T01:29:00.000-07:00

The life of a new blogger is fraught with perils! Allow me to describe my evening. (You can’t actually stop me, can you? All you CAN do is stop reading, but please don’t, or it will make the trauma of losing a blog and having to write a new one, a good deal worse.) I’ve just given away my punch line, haven’t I? I had positioned myself comfortably on my bed, laptop stowed on special new portable table thingy, (note the techno advancement enabling me to correctly name computer accessories), and had settled down to blog. One of my duck retrievers a.k.a. poodles was stretched out on the bed, while the other lay snoring in his basket. (Whoever used the analogy of a dog’s life to be a hard life never met my dogs. And yes, Liz, they DO swim. In fact Coco balances on a body board while I, her faithful person/servant, drag her around the pool! THEN I send her out to retrieve any intrusive ducks.) ...But I digress!

I was comfortably esconsed and suitably inspired to write. It was past dusk, a full moon was filling the view from my bed, and right on cue a hadeda flew by, hysterically calling to whoever had left it to fly home alone in the dark. As hadedas were part of the title of my blog, this augured well, or so I thought. HA! I duly blogged away, happy with the brand new neural pathways in my brain which caused me to type several degrees faster than before, when I pushed something that highlighted the page, and then made the massive mistake of pressing delete. At that moment my screech was serious competition to the lost hadeda, and all I could do was call the BLOGBUSTER, a.k.a. Cheslyn!!! She had got me into this, and my word, she was going to get me out! Bless her heart, she arrived, not allowing morning sickness in the evening to stop her, but alas! Not even Blogbuster could retrieve it. Instead I got a lesson on what not to do should I ever again inadvertently highlight a section again. Repeat after me, “NEVER PRESS DELETE!”

I can’t recapture what I had written, but here’s the gist of it. From the moment I was born again I have passionately loved the word of God. When I discovered who Jesus is, and that he was not what I had imagined him to be in my deceived, alcohol and drug-induced state, I became addicted to the word of God. When you have never known TRUTH and then you find it, it is like drinking ice cold water on a hot and sticky February day in Durban – deliciously refreshing and gloriously restorative. The bible is filled with fascination for me. I love the great themes and doctrines that frame our faith. I am inspired by the heroic deeds of the men and women, just like us, who changed the world. I am captivated by the Personhood of God and the way he relates to people. But I am also entranced by obscure individuals who pop up for no apparent reason, by details which seem totally irrelevant but obviously aren’t or they wouldn’t be there, and by random bits of information hidden among the treasure. When I was a child we always ate traditional Christmas dinners. Traditional, that is, for the northern hemisphere, regardless of the facts that, a) we lived in Zululand and nearly expired from the heat as we consumed our hot lunch, and, b) we didn’t give Jesus any acknowledgement other than to overeat unsuitable food once a year. My grandmother always made the Christmas pudding, and my brother and I helped. It was a tradition to stir into the pudding mix little treasures to be discovered when your portion was served. A thimble, various charms, and most exciting of all.....MONEY. Who even knows what a “tickey” was? I’ll bet not even google knows! You can post a comment if you know. The point is that the pudding itself was delicious, but I can’t describe the excitement of finding MONEY in your pudding!!!!! For me, finding odd bits of unexpected information in the bible carries a similar enjoyment, a guess-what-I-just- found gasp.

I read the bible with the appetite of an addict from the first day I was given The Living Bible as a gift, just hours after praying to give my life unconditionally and unreservedly to Jesus. I was, and am, hooked, and no day feels complete if I haven’t been able to read the word. I was truly overwhelmed the first time I read it. To someone raised on esoteric concepts, the factual content of real people’s lives was revolutionary. I will NEVER be bored reading the geneaologies. These were real people with real lives, who married and had children and built real houses in real towns and lived real lives. They aren’t figments of someone’s imagination. Who would EVER dream up a family whose children were called Huppim, Muppin, and Ard? (This is driving my spell check mad!)

SO......one of my first discoveries was when I was eagerly perusing Leviticus. Yes, really. With great interest I was studying the animals, reptiles, and insects that were listed as verboten to Israel, when I found this startling statement. You may not, if you are kosher, eat owls, kites, vultures, IBIS or BATS. These are unclean birds!!!! SO, dear reader, should you fling your shoe at a passing hadeda and hit it, and it falls dead, with a final, plaintive squawk, at your feet, refrain from eating it, for it is a member of the ibis family, and is therefore an unclean bird. And if, by some misfortune, a bat flies in and you are tempted to swat it down and devour it, remember that it too, is an unclean bird, and release it to fly off unscathed. Ah, you say, what about Peter’s vision of all the hitherto unclean creatures which God now told him he could eat? Well done, and you have just made my point. You KNOW that you are welcome to bat and hadeda stew should that whet your appetite, because you know the whole word.

To be serious for one moment, I do so wish that Christians would read the word, and not just in a perfunctory way, because EVERYTHING we need to know is in it. Besides the fact that it is riveting reading, God speaks to us through the word. He instructs us, encourages us, comforts us, corrects us, and we engage with HIM when we read. I see so many people living on an emotional roller coaster, totally at the mercy of their feelings, when stability and joy is within their grasp.....WHY? Please, please, please, make the word your daily bread and see how things will change for the better.

Hadeda sandwich anyone?

God bless. Fiona

Don't judge a poodle by its haircut!

2010-05-18T08:01:00.000-07:00

So I am totally thrilled and astonished that anyone read my first blog, and beyond ecstatic that your comments were so positive. Thank you!! I type at the speed of drying paint, and a qwerty keyboard is a whole new world to discover. I thought I had conquered the 21st century when I learned predictive text on my faithful Nokia, but Cheslyn Techno Barbie Hemsley has dragged me, kicking and screaming all the way, to qwerty, so all I can hope (I'm not even going to say "pray") is that eventually new channels will form in my brain and my two fingers will learn where to go. The fact that I am typing this straight onto my laptop instead of ballpointing onto exam pad and handing it to Charlene to decipher my handwriting and type for me, is a quantum leap forward.

The big lesson to learn from this is that fear is a foul inhibitor of potential, and if someone cares enough to force us to confront and overcome our limitations, we should be VERY grateful. If you are the one coaxing someone else into unknown and terrifying new fields of endeavour, keep up the pressure. (I hesitate to use the word "nagging" because I really DO love Ches despite her relentless...er..PRESSURE!) Perseverance pays, and some day your victim will thank you. (Thank you Ches.)

Why the title of this blog? I'm glad you asked. We are so quick to make judgments on people without adequate knowledge that we risk missing precious qualities that are there to be discovered and enjoyed. Something that I have been intensely thankful for is having eyes to see potential in people when it is still embryonic. It has been thrilling to see, blossoming in front of my eyes, gifts that people didn't know were there. Encouraging someone to believe that they CAN actually do something will motivate them to try and often succeed at an activity they thought was beyond their ability. That's what God does with us. He takes us from the ash heap, the psalmist says, and seats us with the princes of His people.He entrusts us with the privilege of sharing our faith with a not-yet believer, so that they can step into eternal life as a result of a little while spent chatting to us. We think we can't do it, but He keeps up the pressure, and shows us that it's just a qwerty keyboard, and all we have to do is try.

And poodles? If you have read this far you are about to find out! Poodles are an object lesson in not judging a book by its cover, a person by their tattoos, or a dog by its haircut. When I tell people that I own two poodles (who will feature in a future blog about an audio book), I see them re-booting their brains with reference to who I am. I hear their inner voice loud and clear. "POODLES! You can't be serious? Fiona, the demon-caster-outer, likes POODLES! Shame! She really does have a few issues left over from her psychiatric days."

WRONG!! Poodles have had very bad press and, like many other victims of prejudice, it's totally undeserved. They are actually duck retrievers and their insane hairdos were originally functional. They were bred in Germany, not France,and were bred to swim out into icy rivers and lakes to retrieve ducks and other water birds shot by hunters. The hunters I know are screaming at this point. Keep quiet! Poodle hairdos are your fault! The lower part of the body was shaved to facilitate easy swimming while the top was kept full to keep the dog buoyant. The ridiculous looking pompoms actually cover the joints to protect them from developing arthritis in the freezing water. These intelligent and athletic animals have been perceived as pampered pooches, but it is not their fault that humans give them embarrassing hairstyles.

Aren't you glad that God looks past YOUR hairdo? So am I, with bells on.

Till next time, blessings in abundance.
Fiona

2010-05-14T10:59:00.001-07:00

My First Blog. Celebration Time!

2010-05-14T03:03:00.000-07:00

It took ten years to get round to actually obeying God and printing the book I knew He had prompted me to write. This confession from someone who would say she always obeys instantly and joyfully. So God said write a book about knowing Me, and it took four years of guilty procrastination before I actually and literally put pen to paper. Literally ballpoint pen in longhand onto A4 spiral bound book.Place? Mauritius. Time frame? Two weeks. Achieved? Seven chapters. Result? Two more years of further guilt and the awareness that obedience means finishing a project and not just starting it. Then a month long visit to wonderful friends in Perth and chapters 8 to 16 accomplished. A couple of years later I was in a ministry team meeting and received the gentlest rebuke ever. "Fiona, I just want to mention that it's nearly 2010 and we're still waiting for your book."

Conviction deluxe! (Thanks Granti!) This was followed by two more God prompts. One pastor friend sent an sms out of the blue asking when my book would be in print and followed this up by sowing R10000 to get it into print. Gulp! Further gulp when a week later another ministry friend met me "accidentally" at a b and b we were both staying at and asked the same question. My excuses were now sounding so hollow they had an echo. He said, "What would it take for you to finish this book? do you need to get away? We'll pay for you to go away and get it done." Short of an audible voice and a lightning bolt, I'd heard enough. Thanks Peter and Rory.So I went away and finished what I'd started nine years previously.

God's patience astounds me. My capacity to disobey by partially obeying horrifies me. So does the realisation that the ugly reason for my unwillingness to get the book into print was fear of man, an issue I thought I had overcome. Truthfully though, I was scared that no one would want to read what I had poured my heart into. There are some people whom I enjoy hearing preach, but when I read their books, I seldom get past the first chapter. What if people felt the same way about me? (Always assuming they even enjoyed my preaching..)

So 2010 dawned with my book finally and thankfully in print and for the first time in nearly a decade I didn't enter the new year with a sense of unfinished business. That is until I was told by Cheslyn, the member of my ministry team fondly known as Techno Barbie, that I now had to write regular blogs. After I had finished screaming, I inquired what that entailed. She told me and kept right on telling me until today dawned. And here we are! I am blogging, and this first one is for you Ches! I think I've learned that early capitulation is the way to go for sanity sake. (Did I MENTION that I have a past in psychiatry? No? That's another story but here's a hint. I wasn't a psychiatrist!) Another time I'll tell the story of recording an audio book. It involves snoring poodles, demented hadedas, and an incredibly patient and composed recording boffin.

For now, though, I've said enough. I just hope SOMEONE reads this!
Blessings, Fiona