Emigrating to the New South Africa

What does it mean to emigrate to the New South Africa, you ask? I wish I had enough insight and time to reflect fully on that and explain, but for now, I must relate part of my understanding to you by describing some more of my week.

Emigrating to the New South Africa means engaging with humanity's issues with patient hearts and creativity. We attempted to enter into this through preparing for our Faith and Science evenings on Monday and Tuesday, helping people of the congregation and the community to engage with Scripture and the insights of culture imaginatively and with humor and academic exploration.

Emigrating to the New South Africa means, however, that while this engagement is taking place, we have no choice but to be mindful of the desperation, anger, and suffering that circles and attempts to wipe out that imagination.

On Monday morning, I went to the hospital to visit Sidney, a patient I had seen before - a woman dying of lung cancer. Her grown children and husband were beside themselves, not knowing what to do in the face of her death but also in the face of her fear of death. She was so very afraid. Such a strange feeling for me, to begin a day in the midst of the helplessness of imminent death. It was a moment in life, when you know that your words will never be enough - that you can tell someone not to be afraid until you turn blue, but ultimately, the only thing that will make a difference is expressing God's love for her and trusting that God is present. Trusting Maranatha - that Jesus comes. She was in Parklands, one of the most beautiful hospitals I have ever seen - one of the private hospitals in Durban, where only those with private medical aide may go for care. She was hooked up to a million machines in an impeccably clean room with nurses scurrying to and fro. It was such a different scene from that of other government hospitals for those without medical aide where I have visited here, one of which is literally two blocks away from the private hospital. In the government hospital the roof leaks rain inside and patients are stacked six or more in a cluttered ward. I began my day in Parklands and ended it with visions of just such a government hospital, but in between, many preparations had to be made for our evening of Faith and Science.

After an afternoon of preparation, wherein one of the young ladies of the church had her cell phone stolen by another congregant homeless man from the church sanctuary, I was sitting at a desk in the office, furiously scribbling out equations from organic chemistry to decorate the walls of the church, Gareth popped his head in with more bad news. Gideon, a young adult friend (a member of Manning Road, a refugee from the Democratic Republic of Congo, and a gentle, intelligent university student) had been stabbed in the back, while walking from university to church. Paul, our youth and young adults director, was called to rush him to the hospital, while we all sat stunned and attempting still to present an evening of "fun" and lectures on the intersection of faith and science, while Gideon bled for four hours in Paul's arms in the waiting room at Addington Hospital because the government hospitals are on strike here, and only one doctor was on duty for an entire hospital. Some might call this madness. And it is. But, part of the challenge of the New South Africa seems to be to stop placing blame.

This night, however, was a night of many tears, as it is difficult not to place blame, when violence and suffering seems so very senseless. At first, we thought that the person who stabbed Gideon had stolen his bookbag, which seemed senseless enough, in and of itself, since all the bookbag held were textbooks. We have now discovered that the stabber took nothing. Absolutely nothing. It was pure violence. "The bastards," we said - they're not worth our time. And yet, it is in exactly this climate of desperation and anger where we do minister and must. In a world of so much fear, as much as we lash out in the face of such violence, claiming to want nothing to do with it, if we do not meet it in all its gruesome reality, we let it win.

And so, as I had begun the day by praying, we ended the day by praying - this time for Gideon and for the attacker. Praying that Gideon would survive this, and he has so far. His lung was punctured. He thought he was going to die, and yet Tuesday came, and he is yet alive.

Tuesday was a day of reflection on the madness. A day of trying to improve the previous night of Faith and Science. In the midst of this reflection, we were privileged to visit Gideon in the hospital, privileged to see him alive. And I was distraught to discover upon taking communion to Sidney at Parklands that she had died early that morning. The life of Gideon. The death of Sidney. The death of a part of Gideon's innocence. The life of Sidney now without fear. The madness of the guards walking around with AK-47s and six patients to a ward in Addington Government Hospital. The madness of cancer at Parklands. The awe of persistent joy and compassion - the persistent presence of God through it all. The New South Africa.

Tuesday meant, also, my regular visit to the local Children's Home. It meant the joy of photographing the lives of the girls there and working with them to join the wisdom of Scripture to the beauty of their lives in the making of scrapbooks. This is joy and pain united into one. Mixed in with this joy and pain was the news that one of the girls had cut herself the past weekend out of frustration and anger, and another young girl had overdosed on pills, landing in the government hospital I had visited on Monday. And thus, life comes full circle.

She wanted to die, but she is yet alive. I began this day by a visit to see her. Surrounded by a team of psychologists in a ward of six miserable women, as rain absolutely poured down from the heavens, I could not help but think that these must be the tears of God. I glimpsed her through the door, and she gave me a weak smile. I waited my turn, and it seemed the tears of God were raining on me, when she collapsed in my arms in sobs. I have never seen a young person with as much trauma in her life as this child has seen - I could not bear to relate all of it to you, but if you can imagine it, I can pretty much guarantee that it is a part of her story. She cannot see herself with a future, and it takes little imagination to wonder why. She's covered in cut marks and burn marks and now, holes from IVs, and yet, she is still beautiful, and I pray tonight that she - that we all - will continue to comprehend that death doesn't win - if we die of an insidious disease, if we descend into violence, even if we attempt to bring it on ourselves - death still does not win in South Africa or any other place in this world because this is God's world.

This is a world of faith and science. Science may prove that death exists, but regardless, in the New South Africa, faith says we are yet alive.