where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit.”
(John 3:8)

Spirit of God in the clear running water,
blowing to greatness the trees on the hill,
Spirit of God in the finger of morning,
fill the earth,
bring it to birth,
and blow where you will.
Blow, blow, blow till I be
but breath of the Spirit blowing in me.
(by Sr. Miriam Therese Winter, Medical Mission Sister,
used with gratitude!)



I am a breath of the God's Spirit made "woman"
We are a breath of God's Spirit made Man: that is Incarnation.

And we are called and set apart like in the song:

"God's Spirit is in my heart
He has called and set me apart,
This is what I have to do, what I have to do:

He's sent me to bring the good news to the poor
Tell prisonners that they are prisonners no more
Tell blind people that they can see
And set the downtrodden free

And go, tell everyone the news that the Kingdom of God has come
And go tell everyone the news that God's kingdom has come!"



How we sang and sang and sang these beautiful words during the noble anti apartheid

struggle years! The outcome of doing theology in a fragmented society

was the upsurge of life through death! The little people are, today still,

rising from Apartheid's ashes, they are building a rainbow nation.

Slowly, painfully, with many set backs but united in God's Spirit:

what a power, not a might! Just the Power of God's Love.

And today? Contextual theology, liberation theology, people's theology?

Quo vadis?

Paul had warned, in his time already, the dogma loving theologians of all times:

"Do not quench the Spirit. Do not despise prophecies" (1 Thess. 5:19-20)
And many high placed dogmatists did and do just that!

So Jesus starts all over again to speak in our hearts and to send us urgently

"proclaim that his Spirit lives and works and creates a new world

with our sweat and eager hands!"

8th May 2005

Mothers' Day

Because I feel that in the heavens above
The angels, whispering one to another,
Can find among their burning terms of love,
None so devotional as that of "Mother"...
Edgar Allen Poe

May the 5th is a very special day

5th May 1948
Just arrived from Switzerland via England and Ireland, I arrived where I had been sent:

South Africa. On that day, in a small south african boer town named Aliwal North,

the capital of the then Orange Free State, I began the year's formation as a Sister,

the novitiate. Nearby, in the veldt, the large, mostly waterless Orange river slept

as it streched desperately towards the sea.
I got used to the healthy climate of this beautiful country, I learned, partial as it was,

the history of the Church amongst the people. I learned English and Afrikaans, met people

and tried to feel, with respect, their life and living. I discovered beautiful people caught up

in a horrible system: the institutionalized separation of races named Apartheid.

It was a shock!



5th May 1949
I was judged fit to make "profession" and be accepted as a teaching Missionary Sister.

I was working in the Little Flower Mission school, in a densely populated Blackspot,

near Pretoria.
My Mission was to civilize and convert, as far as possible, the uncivilized and pagan

black people. Lo and behold: the poor and oppressed people civilized and christianized me.

At least they tried. I discovered Jesus living, struggling to survive in death realities,

dying, rising endlessly on the move. Even today.



5th May 1955
After 6 years of probation I was allowed to make life long alliance with Jesus,

for better, for worse! In that time, I had learned much about the system

that dehumanized people, be they rich or poor.
We are born free.
The yearning for freedom kept burning in our hearts; take part in the grassroots struggle

for freedom was as natural as the struggle to be faithful to Jesus.

It was people driven and justice orientated!



5th May 2005
With immense gratitude for the God given strength along the way, I think of the

"Long Road to Freedom" of Nelson Mandela, our Madiba, of his people,

of the ongoing struggle for economic justice and for healing, for the building,

without garantie of success, of our rainbow Nation!
Furthermore, we celebrate this very day, what the Church calls the "ascension of Jesus".

I have no problem believing that Jesus indeed descended deep into his actual abode:

people hearts.