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Tuesday, January 20, 2004
South Africa: ten years later 
The Mandela years: 1994-1999 What a grace to have had Madiba as a leader for just 4 years. His deep humility says I, his human touch, his intelligence, his God likedness! We love you Madiba! Thabo Mbeki followed and tried his best! Yet it was impossible not to be disappointed. After Madiba's magic! 
Yet, if Madiba said OK to the people's choice of Mbeki, so did we! Mbeki worked hard. But willy nilly slid over from RDP: Reconstruction and Development Program to GEAR: Growth, Employment and Redistribution. Grassroot people could not understand. It was not explained to them. Many felt let down, yet they plod on, on the road to survival, the long long road to Freedom from Poverty, AIDS, Misery. Mandela's Spirit is with us still! 2004 elections in South Africa South African President Thabo Mbeki unveiled Saturday evening his ruling party's manifesto for the 2004 presidential elections by declaring to "radically reduce the levels of unemployment and poverty." What would be the alternative? Thabo? Sunday, January 18, 2004
This was posted to some of us, including me, by our most dearest friend, Gérard Rolland. For years he helped us face our creator stripped of institutional lies and varnish. God's Spirit within our deepest self. How grateful I am, dear Friend! "L'Adorable Patience a posé son regard sur nos manques, nos fards. Reste la ressemblance Qui adore en silence Au fond de nos mémoires." Jean Mambrino (S.J.) "Le Veilleur Aveugle" (1956) 
"Adorable Patience bent low over my unfinished self love infinite likeness in silent adoration in memory's deeper self waiting His final touch" (free translation: Claire Marie Jeannotat) Susan George The American born, then French naturalized Susan George gave an interview to the Lausanne Daily 24 heures, today. For more than 30 years, gifted with the passion for social justice, highly qualified in the fields of political and social sciences, in philosophy and French litterature, she joined, inspired the struggle for a better, a different world. She answers the journalists' questions directly, with facts. The dollars stream up painfully from the starving South to the overfed Northern hemisphere. Yet he climate and a nature destructive economy threaten the very survival of the people wherever they may be! 
So to tackle painful changes is no longer a choice, it is a matter of survival at the planet level. Susan George goes on with the struggle through writing, teaching the younger generations. (She is born in 1934). She prefers the term "movement for a global justice" to that of "altermondialists". And she is so right I think. Ongoing challenges to be faced and taken up! Is it so mad to dare dream of the possibility of a more humane, just and happy world for all? Isn't that Yeshuah's life dream that ended in Calvary and beyond? Why should it not be my dream and my raison d'être in this world, too? Doris Lessing, another great Lady I fondly love, tells what the thirst and search for water could be on a dried out, parched planet. "Mara and Dann" (title of her 1999 book) illustrate the drama in a gripping manner. We shudder to think we could be in their footsteps (they wear no shoes) and jealousy hide a few drops of water in a tinbox hid in a belt! And getting it stolen or lost! 
How many little people, as I write these few words have fresh clean water to drink? I am drawn again to Jesus, the source of "living water", indeed the most precious fluid gold wrapped in blue. To quench our common thirst for "this water that I shall give and which will turn into a spring inside him (her) welling up to eternal life." (Jn 4:14) 
Our little planet's azure blue gold! Friday, January 16, 2004
The Pain of Christ and the little rabbit's cry I remember, oh! so very long ago, finding on the quasi bare shelf of the Novitiate, a modest book signed Gerald Vann OP. The title: "The Pain of Christ". I grabbed and read it. One thing only struck me ans stuck to my mind and penetrated my heart throughout the passing years. Gerald Vann described the litlle rabbit's cry of agonizing pain after the hunter got him! Dead. Not a word, like Jesus "he never said a mumbling word…" just a life giving cry…Into you hands, my God, I commend my spirit… Take me home! The bonnie's expiring cry of pain filters thoughout Jesus life, struggle, death and beyond, even up to here and now, for it is not the end yet, a trickle of crimson blood… turning into life giving sap… 
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