"This time for Africa..."

"...Listen to your God,
this is our motto
Your time to shine,
don't wait in line...
Y vamos por todo.
People are raising their expectations,
go on and feel it.
This is your moment,
no hesitation.

Tsamina mina zangalewa.
Cause this is Africa.
Tsamina mina eh eh,
Waka waka eh eh
Tsamina mina zangalewa,
This time for Africa
This time for Africa..."

Have you seen this music video yet? 

Shakira's performance of the 2010 FIFA World Cup theme song, "Waka, Waka...This time for Africa," is amazing.  There is something so "in your face" alive about its message of: we are all here, but not just to root for our favorite teams and countries.  We are here to root for something even more powerful.  We are here to celebrate the power of forgiveness and redemption."

Or at least this is the message that comes through loud and clear to my heart.

Readers of this blog know how deeply the South African sun has seared my soul.  Her winds have burnished my cheeks coloring them with the soft red of a dusty bushveld sunset.  And her Indian Ocean blues wrap themselves around my shoulders like a soft pashmina.

Watching this video today, over,and over again, was wonderful.

I couldn't help but think that 21 years ago, my husband and I walked across the tarmac at Jan Smuts airport with our infant daughter in our arms, and her travel documents...and miraculously (I use this term very thoughtfully) acquired immigration visa and South African passport...tucked carefully under my clothing for safe-keeping.

International sanctions had been imposed on the South African government (and hence, their people) for  Apartheid-era human rights violations.  The city of Johannesburg was under a "state of emergency" and we, an American couple from the heart of the anti-apartheid western alliance, were adopting a white infant, and taking her from their country.  The very fact that we were crossing the tarmac and boarding a plane headed for the United States was...after weeks of navigating red tape, diplomatic brick walls, and outright refusals for assistance from every office of the South African government...shocking.  I held my breath with every step closer to boarding the jet that would take us to Frankfurt...an airport that still allowed South African flights.

As our flight took off, I turned to my husband and whispered that if we made it out of South African airspace, they...the pre-reconcilation governement...would have broken all of their own laws, since under apartheid, there was no legal basis for granting us the travel documents we were carrying, and letting us the country leave with our daughter.   But they did.

A year later, as our daughter sat eating applesauce from her highchair in our Colorado home,  Mandela would walk out of Robbins Island prison a free man...free to lead a nation out of oppression, free to inspire a tortured people to lay down their right to  retribution, free to seek reconciliation rather than redress...and free to begin the long road towards healing and international recognition as a leader in finding a peaceful resolution to civil schisms so deep that they threatened to swallow up the hopes of a nation once steeped in darkness and hatred.

Watching the "Waka, Waka..." video tonight and realizing how far this country...and her people...have come, I was reminded of Mandela's statement:

"It always seems impossible until its done."

This weekend, as South Africa opens her doors, her heart, and her beauty to the world, she will be hosting the very nations that once refused to trade goods with her, allow the export of their media across her borders, or admit entry into their ports of call by her ships and planes.  She will have done the impossible in the 21 short years (and as a mother, I know how fast those years flew for me) from that day we walked across the Jan Smuts airport tarmac, while South African army gunmen stood watching us with AK47s.  And while rebel militants smuggled the same automatic weapons down back alleys in small towship villages, and government tanks were aimed at rural school children on dusty playgrounds...a silent threat hoping to check potential civil unrest.

And now, the township of Soweto, one of the most devastatingly horrific slums I'd ever seen, in 1989, now holds one of the most beautiful World Cup soccer stadiums ever built. 

Last night, as I was driving home from church, NPR's Tom Ashbrook commented, during an On Point segment discussing Iran's relationship with the rest of the international community (and any hope of improved diplomacy) that it seemed not only counter-factual, but counter intuitive, to hope for a warming of relations with its neighbors.

I couldn't help but remember where our beloved South Africa was a mere 21 years ago...and how one man's example could turn the tide of vengence into a river of reconciliation. Something deeper than anger carved a path of hope through the hardness of hatred and fear.

"With God, all things are possible..."

I am so grateful to have lived to see this extraordinary day, when South Africa is reconciled, not only within her own borders, but with her global neighbors.  I am not a sports fan, but I will be watching the World Cup.  I haved already learned the words to "Waka, Waka..."  I will try to learn the dance...much to my daughters' horror!  And I know that when they play "...the time for Africa" I will feel something break wide-open in my soul as we all join in singing along with her...as her neighbors...and friends, "We are Africa, we are Africa..."

God bless her...
Kate
Kate Robertson, CS

"Thy Word is a lamp unto my feet..."

"...I will not forget,
your love for me and yet,
my heart's forever wandering...

...Nothing will I fear,
as long as you are near,
please be near me to the end.

Thy word is a lamp unto my feet,
and a light unto my path.
Thy word is a lamp unto my feet
and a light unto my path."

I was listening to Krista Tippett's provocative interview with South Africa's Nobel Prize winning Anglican Archbishop Desmond Tutu, last Sunday, and had one of those "driveway moments" when getting out of the car, to go into church, was like prying a clinging abalone shell from a coral reef...and I was the one doing the prying. 

I had to remind myself that the very message that had me clinging to the dashboard like a bi-valve, to hear just one more minute of the interview, was the exact reason I needed to get out of the car...the Bible, the living, breathing, palpating, life-transforming and empowering Word of God. 

If you weren't able to catch "Speaking of Faith" last Sunday, I highly recommend listening to the podcast of Krista's interview.   But I digress...ever so slightly, but a digression nonetheless.

Just to set the stage. We were well ahead of the game on Sunday morning.  I was scheduled to conduct our Sunday service that week, and we were on the road in plenty of time to get to church, lay out my books, write the hymn numbers on the white boards, and settle into my chair so that I could say "howdy" to well-loved friends, while we greeted visitors coming through the door.

But, I made the mistake I make every Sunday.  I turned on NPR and I was hooked.  When Krista introduced her guest, I knew this would be an especially difficult "driveway moment."  As regular readers know, I am smitten by all things related to the spiritual lives, and stories, of those who lived through South Africa's apartheid era of attempted minority rule, racial domination, the suppression of a aboriginal "voice", and the oppression of basic human rights.  My relationship to South Africa goes very deep.

For me, the lives of men and women like Steven Biko, Nelson Mandela, Desmond Tutu, and my dear friend Dorothy Maubane continue to be an inspiration of spiritual poise, unconditional love, a faith that can move mountains of hate, and a sense of forgiveness that has the power to dissolve vengeance.

When I heard Tutu's unmistakable voice I felt a great knot of emotion fill my throat, and knew this was going to be a difficult morning of getting Kate out of the car and into "Sunday School"...

His interview was barely out of the gate, when, in talking about the role of the Bible in his life as an Apartheid era South African he replied:

"If these people had wanted to keep us oppressed,
they shouldn't have given us the Bible." 

He went on to relate how the Bible is the quintessential guidebook for emancipation, freedom, and liberty.  How the Bible is packed full of stories about "a people" who were oppressed, broken and enslaved, finding freedom through an understanding of their intrinsic worth as the image and likeness of God.   He said, "Discovering that the Bible could be such dynamite....The many parts of the Bible that were so germaine, so utterly to the point for us.  When you discover that Apartheid sought to mislead people into believing that what gave value to human beings was a biological irrelevance,  really, skin color or ethnicity.  And you saw how the Scriptures say it is because we are ceated in the image of God,  that each one of us is a God-carrier.  No matter what our physical circumstances may be, no matter how awful or deprived you may be, it doesn't take away from you this intrinsic worth as the image of God."

He went on to help me see,  that the very "apartheid laws" that said one popluation was of less worth...based on race...laws that were the basis for allowing "whites" to exercise dominance over tribal southern Africans, those "laws" of genetic predisposition to racial dominance, are, when exercised spiritually, are the basis for emancipation under the law of God that say that man (all men, women, and children) are "heirs of God, and joint heirs with Christ."

He told us, as listeners, about women in his small Soweto congregation...housekeepers, launderers, maids, and cooks...who had been deprived of their given names by their employers, tribal names that were deemed too difficult to pronounce, and had been renamed "Annie," or, in the case of most men, "boy."   These women were his parishioners, but they were also women whose very spirits seemed broken, heavy-burdenened, and tired with labor.  In his sermons and in private conversations, He would say to them:

"When they ask you 'who are you?'  Say, 'Me, I am a God-carrier.  I am God's partner.  I am created in the image of God."

Tutu went on to say that these women would walk out of church on cloud nine, with their backs slightly straighter.  "Each one of us," he said,  "is a God-carrier."  It was exhilerating to see...it was amazing. 

The Bible.  The Word.  The very thing that the early sub-African British and European missionaries came to disseminate, the very religiously superior reasoning for oppression, the very thing that "Christian Europeans" felt gave them the upper spiritual hand in suppressing the traditions, cultures, lives of native populations...calling them infidels and savages...was the very key to their true, and lasting, authoritative emancipation from oppression.  

Amy Grant and Micahel W. Smith sing "The Word is a Lamp unto My Feet" with a new message for me this morning as I write this.  

But Sunday morning, when I heard the authority of voice, the confidence of spirit, the inspired cry to rise against oppression, with which Desmond Tutu spoke of the Bible's promise, I could no longer sit in the car. 

I felt that moment's calling.  The weary bridge-builder, the peace marcher, the human rights advocate, the spiritual "feminist," the environmental activist in me absolutely flew out of that car.  Nothing was going to stop me from sharing The Word with anyone who was willing to hear its pure, clear, refreshing, revitalizing, restorative, recuperative, invigorating, rallying cry of spiritual self-governance, emancipation, and freedom from oppression, victimization, or discouragement.

I will repeat what, for me, was Desmond Tutu's gift to a world confused about what to do next.  How to respond, spiritually, to a world at war, in financial crisis, afraid of its neighbors, and feeling victimized by natural disasters and corporate greed:

"If 'these people' had wanted to keep us oppressed,
then they should never have given us the Bible."

It's really never about oppressive people, it's about oppressive beliefs, suggestions, concepts that would demoralize, stratify, and separate us into haves and have nots, good and bad, right and wrong...or even, right and left.  But when we can rip off the mask of it being about different kinds of people and take up arms against the beliefs that are causing us to take sides against one another's freedom, success, and peace of mind, we are can truly live as "joint heirs with Christ" and eliminate the apartheid, apartness, that is always at the heart of what will steal our freedom and oppress our spiritual right to live as brothers and sisters with one Father-Mother, God. 

Mary Baker Eddy writes:

"Citizens of the world, accept the glorious liberty
of the children of God, and be free, this is your divine right."

Today I am singing a new protest song with Michael, and Amy, and anyone else who loves this message of hope and freedom:

"Thy word is a lamp unto my feet,
and a light unto my path..."

And it is. The Bible (which is the Scripture of my faith tradition, but certainly not the only scripture filled with inspiration for anyone longing for a spiritual path to freedom) is full of stories of promise and encouragement. The Israelites at the edge of the Red Sea, Joseph held in Pharoah's prison, Job convicted by opinion, David enslaved by the shackles of regret and remorse, Jesus walking through the angry crowds untouched, Peter finding freedom...through Christ's precious love...from the chains of guilt and self-doubt. Stories of hope and deliverance. It chronicles the accounts of women, and men who, like Jesus, remembered what was "written," and stood on the promise of what "could not God do."

Thank you Krista, Desmond, and all who have knowingly, or perhaps even unwittingly, shared "the Word" through your life, your witness, your mission...you have given someone a window on their God-bestowed and God-defended freedom...the key to their own emancipation.

with loving hope,
Kate
Kate Robertson, CS

"Come on people now..."

"...If you hear the song I sing
You will understand (listen!)
You hold the key to love and fear
All in your trembling hand
Just one key unlocks them both
It's there at you command

Come on people now
Smile on your brother
Everybody get together
Try to love one another..."
Right now
-Powers

The phone rang at 2:30 in the morning the other night.  Thanks to caller ID I knew it was Hannah's birthmother before I even answered it.  I was grateful for that advance notice.  It gave me the moment I needed to center my heart, and reaffirm for myself the unflagging fact that God was with Hannah wherever she was, whatever she was doing.  I may be 12,000 miles from where she is, but God was infinitely near.

I answered with my heart in His hands.  She must have known that I would be concerned because she immediately said, "Hannah is fine."  I could breathe again. 

"But," she followed, "we are going through a terrible time here." She continued to explain the situation that they were facing in Johannesburg.  A situation that was quickly reaching beyond the city and spreading throughout other regions of South Africa.  Tens of thousands of refugees from other African countries had streamed across her borders seeking sanctuary.  Local Africans fearing loss of jobs, resources, and aid were lashing out violently against those who were there for asylum. 

She was calling for help.  And I wanted nothing more than to be able to catch a flight and be there standing next to her volunteering at the makeshift refugee camps that were popping up in school yards and at police stations, in open fields and under bridges.  But that wasn't what she was asking for. 

"You have a blog, you could tell people what we are facing and what we need…" she offered.  She knew what I could do and she knew what resources I had to offer.  She knew that I, as one small human 12,000 miles away, would be practically useless in the scheme of feeding and caring for 30,000 refugees.  But her sense of my reach was larger.  She reminded me that I have a voice.  I have words.  I could let readers know that there was a grave need for supplies, food, and most importantly, prayers.

Then she asked the question that would take my response to a higher level of peace, "Who do you know…don't you know someone who can help?" 

That was when I really started to feel like there was a practical answer to her call for help.

Yes, I did know someone….I knew God.  I knew my Father-Mother God who had cared for my mother, siblings and I when dad was killed suddenly leaving us in debt, without money and very few options for employment or assistance

I knew this all-loving divine Parent intimately.  I knew His over-arching care in the midst of dispair.  I knew Her comfort when the nights were dark and there was no hope in sight.  I knew the radiance of His warmth filling me from within with love and compassion for my mom, raising my seven younger siblings with only my sister and me as bread-winners.  I knew the strength of His hand in guiding and protecting us.

Yes, I knew someone…I knew the only One who could really help. 

In the last few days I have contacted the American Red Cross, shared the story of South Africa's plight with colleagues, friends, neighbors, and organizations I work with.  I have made calls and written emails.  But these efforts pale in the light of what I know will be the answer. 

To know someone…to really know Him.  To know that She is already there.  She is there in the heart of Hannah's birthmom who leaves her young children each day to go volunteer in a refugee camp.  He is there in the compassion shown by those who are giving their foreign neighbors sanctuary and relief.  He is there in the hands of aid workers bottling water, distributing food, tucking blankets in around the shoulders of nursing mothers weak and tired from days of travel on foot.  She is there nursing children and singing to babies.  She is there.

What can you do….who do you know? 

With hope... 
Kate

"You raise me up..."

"When I am down and, oh my soul, so weary;
When troubles come and my heart burdened be;
Then, I am still and wait here in the silence,
Until you come and sit awhile with me.

You raise me up, so I can stand on mountains;
You raise me up, to walk on stormy seas;
I am strong, when I am on your shoulders;
You raise me up: To more than I can be…."
-Josh Groban

Like most adventures in my life these days, I believe that if  I were to actually mull over them in advance…I probably wouldn't have the courage to actually go through a single one.  So it was with my trip to South Africa.  I knew that I needed, and wanted (more than anything), to go see my daughter and meet her "first" mom (face-to-face and heart-to-heart).  But getting on a plane, much less getting on four planes and traveling for more than 45 hours in 10 days seemed paralyzingly scary. 

I don't like to fly.  Period!  I don't enjoy any part of the process.  Deciding on dates, looking for fares that are less than the cost of a small eastern-european country, purchasing tickets, checking in, choosing seats, security, customs, waiting, waiting, waiting…boarding, waiting, take off, sitting, trying to get comfortable, waiting, not sleeping, waiting, turbulence, waiting, landing, disembarking, waiting, customs, waiting, waiting, security…waiting for my ride.  I never even get to think about all the wonderful things I am going to do between landing at my destination and taking off again for home…I spend most of my time thinking about how much I don't want to get back on the plane again.  It is a vicious cycle and I have been in its grip…way too many times.  I spent almost five years traveling…a lot…for my work with a national speakers' bureau (earning my platinum status on more than two airlines' frequent flyer programs)…and I vowed when that chapter was finished I would no longer travel anywhere I could not drive myself…no matter how long it took.   Little did I know at that time my daughter would decide to go live in South Africa.  Can't drive there…if you could…I would have tried.

And I haven't flown since I finished that appointment.  Other than one short flight in 2005, I have kept my feet soundly planted on terra firma since…hmmm…then it occurred to me…it was since 2001.  Actually it was since mid-September of 2001.  Even my 2005 flight was less than two hours and it was just one way…and I got on kicking and screaming inside…and only because I couldn't drive to my destination at the very last minute.  If it hadn't been a commitment that I absolutely couldn't cancel…I would have tried…well, actually I did try and then saw that I would have been letting people I loved down in a big way.  When plans for traveling to South Africa began to percolate I suddenly realized that even though I didn't think 9/11 had effected the way I lived my life…it had.  In a very sub-conscious way I had decided that I would not fly any longer…and had never connected that decision to 9/11.  Hmmm. 

Here's how it finally came to a place of healing for me.  I was sitting in my cabin at camp this past June and my husband was on the phone trying to get me to commit to a flight schedule for my trip to South Africa.  But I was doing every thing I could to avoid his request for a confirmation of times and dates.  At the same time, I was offering my daughter an "out"…instead of coming over in July, I could come for two weeks at Christmas-time rather than 10 days now…and I was sweating bullets every time I even thought about flight schedules.  I needed to make a commitment and so what did I do…I convinced Hannah and Jeff that a trip this summer was just not good timing.  And then I realized how relieved I felt.  "Ahhh..." you think…but no, this was not a good kind of relief.    It's the kind of relief that is just the avoidance of something that needs deeper healing.  It's the feeling that says, "Whew, I escaped that…" and it's a feeling that I've come to recognize as the sure sign that I need to reconsider a decision.

So, I called someone I knew would hold my toes to the fire…my daughter's birthmom…for many reasons I had grown to trust that she was putting our daughter's needs above everything else…this time that included my own unspoken fears. I asked her if she thought it would be better for me to come in December and she said, "absolutely not…now is the right time…no matter how hard it is, we'll figure it out".  Little did she know that the "hard" (at that moment) was not about the uncertain dynamics of Hannah having both of her moms in the same room.  That "hard" had never crossed my mind, and it never crossed our path.  But I digress...I do that alot on this blog.  So to get back on track...she said, "absolutely not...now is the right time...no matter how hard it is, we'll figure it out."

Hmmm…allrighty then.  I had known in my heart that this was true, I guess I needed someone to override my terror.

The minute I got off the phone with her I picked up the phone and called my husband to say, "Book it".  Then I started to pray.  I became very still and just listened with all my heart.  Waiting in the silence was like sitting on my porch early in the morning when the clouds are still hanging low and watching as they lift and disperse.  And it was in the space of this silence that I realized what really had me paralyzed with fear about flying.  It was not a specific fear, like, "I am afraid that terrorists will be on board", or "I am afraid that we will crash into the ocean".  No, that would have been obvious enough for me to actually identify, pray about and see through.  This fear was just so subtle.  I would start as a prickling of discomfort that crept over me like a swarm of ants until I felt like I could not move without inciting an ant riot that would leave me full of welts and gasping for air.  And it was this very subtlety that gave me my first clue as to how insidious the fear was…and how ridiculous. 

I had never flown…just to fly…so why would I be afraid of "just flying"…period.  I always flew with a sense of spiritual purpose…to fulfill a commitment, to help a friend, to celebrate a union, the birth of a child…to support the family of someone who had passed on.  I always traveled with intent and as Mary Baker Eddy says, "Nothing but wrong intention can hinder your advancement."

So I went back to what was my intent for this flight.  My intent was to love my daughter and to celebrate her life and her family in South Africa.  I was flying to "mother"…period.  That was when I remembered that the most peaceful, time-less, wonderful flight I had ever been on was the one I took in 1989 when I traveled by myself to South Africa to adopt Hannah in South Africa.  I never remember it as a long flight or a difficult flight, but as a blessed flight, an expectant flight, as a flight pregnant with promise. 

And this was how I began to think about this flight to South Africa.  I wasn't taking a flight…I was taking this flight.   This blessed, purposeful, divinely authorized flight to see my beloved daughter and her family.  I was being sent on this flight by God…I was not being borne blindly by steel and rubber and jet fuel through a politically-charged global environment.  I was being sent on a love-based mission via an instrument of intelligent design and through an environment full of angels, prayers, and hope.

When the day for my flight arrived I held to what the intent for this flight was and trusted that the Love which was sending me, was going to be with me every kilometer of that trip.

"O longing hearts that wait on God
   Through all the world so wide;
He knows the angels that you need,
   And sends them to your side,
   To comfort, guard and guide."
-Violet Hay

My flight was glorious.  Peace-full, purpose-full, blessed.  As we took off into the night sky above Washington D.C., and the lights of our country's capital faded like the jet stream behind us as the vast Atlantic became our landscape far below I felt as serene as if I were sitting on the porch of my cabin at camp reading the lesson while a hundred campers milled about on the lawn.  It was as if God had placed his hand under the Adirondack rocker and just...oh so gently..."raised me up" and was carrying me to my daughter.  Or as Mary Baker Eddy relates, in describing her spiritual journey, it was "sweet, calm, and buoyant with hope..."

I am so grateful…for so much...

More to come,
Kate

Motherhood Knows No Color

I am discovering that motherhood changes us...alters our way of looking at the world around us...of listening to the way the world sings and speaks...and may even change what we think it is, or was,  saying....sometimes the the message is so arrestingly different, when listened to through those mother-ears, that it stops us in our tracks and resonates within our hearts in a new way...a way that transforms what was once simply the soundtrack of a particular period in history into a moment's inspiration...into a prayer...a message from God...speaking to universal humanity....universal motherhood...

"...Well, there's a rose in a fisted glove
And the eagle flies with the dove
And if you can't be with the one you love
Love the one you're with
Love the one you're with..."

- Stephen Stills, 1970

A recent Backstory article in the Christian Science Monitor titled "Home Sweet Fortress" details reporter Scott Baldauf's adventures through the labyrinth of personal and home security in the city of his latest assignment, Johannesburg, South Africa.

A timely article for me.  Our daughter, Hannah, just returned to Johannesburg for another month before traveling on to her destination in a small coastal village outside of Capetown where she will spend the next year finishing her secondary education.

Hannah's epic journey to South Africa last summer was the subject of an article on safety in both the Monitor and on this Blog (scroll down October 3, 2006 blog "Securing Children's Safety" ).

When Hannah's dad and I traveled to South Africa in 1989 to pick her up as our newly adopted child, the country was in turmoil.  It was during the height of Apartheid. Our visit there was rife with red tape, governmental intimidation and uneasiness.  Under the surface you could almost feel the red veld itself under your feet, seething with repressed anger and pent up violence.  Hatred surfaced on the faces of the white government soldiers who as a matter of routine carried automatic weapons on the streets of both large cities and small towns.  That hatred was mirrored in the young black men who stood in darkened doorways with older model AK-47 rifles at the ready.  High walls and large dogs that characterized white neighborhoods all gave off an angry heat that made even the African sun pale by comparison.

One afternoon as my husband and I drove from the farm where we were staying to Johannesburg, we passed the local farm school that served the children of black farm workers in that township.  At first glance this could have been the modest playground of any private rural school.  The girls were dressed in pleated red and blue plaid skirts and collared polo shirts, the boys in navy pants or shorts and the same white shirts or red sweaters.  My husband, charmed by the sweet laughter of the young schoolboys playing a version of kickball in the yard and the little girls giggling as their friends moved in and out of double dutch jump rope, pulled our borrowed car to the side of the road to snap a photo or two. 

Looking closer, things came more clearly into focus.   Suddenly  the disparity between the scene in front of us and a schoolyard "back home" was arrestingly obvious.  The children were all black, all bare-footed. and all so thin.  Until we looked at the frail limbs poking out from voluminous shirt sleeves and pant legs which camouflaged their thinness, we were convinced we had been looking at healthy children at play.  But as arresting as this discovery was, it was not the most sobering element of what filled the lens of our camera and our hearts that afternoon.  Just out of focus, about 100 yards away in a field of tall grasses, South African Army tanks pointed directly at the schoolyard.

I felt a cold chill down my spine as I realized the depth to which the sharp blade of threat had been plunged daily into the hearts and minds of these children's parents as they weighed their child's education with their safety.  Insurgency was held at bay by the barrels of enormous military tanks pointed at small children.  The message of this silent threat was clear: their children could face what had happened thirteen years earlier when hundreds of young school children in Soweto, South Africa were massacred by South African police as the children and their parents protested inferior educational opportunities and demanded the right to be taught in their own language.  I felt faint with horror.

No wonder more than a million strong, intelligent black Africans had chosen not to take to the streets in opposition to the repression of their basic human rights.  It was love that kept them waiting for over twenty years....waiting for a Moses to march them peaceably out of bondage and bloodshed.  Our daughter was nine months old and we were back in the States when Nelson Mandela walked out of Robin's Island prison.  Hannah is now 17 and is a tall, beautiful, intelligent, proud South African citizen with dual American citizenship.  She possesses flashing green eyes and a heart for defending human rights wherever she sees them being violated...wherever and whenever someone is being treated without dignity...from a middle school classroom where her best friend was made fun of for speaking with an accent, to a Sunday School discussion where she opposed the characterization of those who supported same sex marriage as immoral. 

This same daughter, when asked about the crime and violence in Johannesburg that we often hear is the highest in the world, shared with us that, yes, there is a lot of crime and violence, and you have to be very, very alert and wise when you leave your gated, walled, security-system protected and dog-guarded home.  But, she also offered that when she is afraid or feels unsettled or threatened, she just looks for help from an older black woman.  Hannah explained that they have the kindest faces and are always willing to help you and protect you.  She went on to say they are like mothers and grandmothers to everyone and it doesn't matter that she is white...she is a child who needs care.

I can only pray my thanks to these women who once faced the horrors of daily threat to their own children's safety.  These women have strong hearts, tempered by the harshness of their past.  These same hearts have been made flexible and open, stretched from having cared for, loved, fed, clothed and in many ways educated the young white children of their employers while serving as housekeepers, nannies, maids and governesses.

When Hannah was born she was very ill and frail.  My first stop after leaving the hospital with her was our host's farm on the Botswana border where our host and her husband were entertaining friends, business colleagues, and their wives, for a holiday of safari.  When we arrived, Hannah was rather weak and I couldn't get her to take food.  I was surrounded by kindly, well-educated, white South Africans but it was the young black housekeeper, who already had a handful of children herself, who courageously stepped forward to take Hannah out of my arms that day.  The housekeeper later came to my bedroom on the farm and continued to breastfeed Hannah until she was strong enough to take milk more vigorously on her own.   This same housekeeper saw her own very young children off during a ten-mile walk each week to the local farm school.  She would leave them there and make the trek back to our host¢s "camp",  not seeing them again until she or her husband walked back to pick them up at the end of the week.

I think of this young woman today as I ponder my daughter's safety in the arms of the many Dorothy or Maria  "grandmothers" who respond to names  that an employer or sponsor gave them, not names in their native tongue that they were blessed with at birth.  I pray my thanks to them.  I send it over continents and oceans and hope it reaches them where they can be found embracing my daughter on a public bus, in an office building, or on a street corner...or most recently in the airplane lavatory on her trip here for her dad's wedding last month.  During her 15-hour flight Hannah became ill and turned to yet another kind South African black "grandmother" to help her.  This woman held her hair and cooed comfort in her ear through the long night above the Atlantic Ocean.

Nelson Mandela came out of Robin's Island and led his country out of hatred because he held the hearts of mothers who knew what it meant to love and to oppose violence wherever it raises its ugly head.

Motherhood knows no color....I feel secure in knowing that wherever there are mothers of any color, my daughter and her friends are safe and cared for.  I hope and pray that I have the opportunity be a "grandmother" for someone else's child today.  Join me....please...

"...Well, there's a rose in a fisted glove
And the eagle flies with the dove
And if you can't be with the one you love
Love the one you're with
Love the one you're with..."

K

photo credit: photo of the children in the schoolyard was taken by
Dwight Oyer - May, 1989 - Randfontein, South Africa

Securing Children's Safety

"Security for the claims of harmonious existence is found only in divine Science. "
                                                              - Mary Baker Eddy

Our 17 year old daughter was somewhere in a plane high above the Atlantic ocean when it occurred to me that she would be landing in Sau Paulo airport early the next morning and would have a 10 hour layover in a city that I knew nothing about.   I was volunteering at a camp for teens in the Rocky Mountains.  My job was to help counselors and campers find spiritual strength, healing, guidance and peace, through prayer, each day as they headed out for activities that ranged from backpacking in mountains that towered 14,000 feet above sea level, to whitewater rafting on one of the most demanding rivers in the southwest. 

Even though my days were filled with inspiration and I felt deep-settled calm about each of our campers, and their concerns for personal safety and freedom from harm, I sat bolt upright in bed at 2 AM that morning when I realized that I could actually google "Sao Paulo airport" on my laptop and see what Hannah's options for boredom-alleviating activities and finding a secure place to rest were, until her connecting flight to Johannesburg South Africa boarded later that day. 

I hoped that she would call when she landed so that I could share my research with her and suggest some places that she might want to take a taxi from the airport to, and explore during the day. 

As I powered up my laptop and waited for the dial up modem to find a local connection in the rather remote area where camp rests at the base of a range of mountains in the Arkansas Valley, I was somewhat pleased with myself for thinking of this little project and how wonderful it was that I could be so informed about a place I had never even considered, until Hannah's flight was rerouted the day before from her scheduled  connection thorugh Dubai, Dubai to Sao Paulo, Brazil. 

I typed in "Sao Paulo airport" and the first hit took my breath away.  It was a news item from a major US city's daily newspaper that told of riots in the streets of Sao Paulo and the burning of buses and attacks on tourists.  I was paralyzed with fear.  I spent the next hour, not praying, but googling everything I could to find as much information about the situation as I could.   I then called the airlines, the Federal Aviation Administration's hotline, and a terrorism watchdog organization that I found online that told me that "yes, there is grave concern about airport security in Sao Paulo....in fact, travel through Sao Paulo was discouraged for the next few days until the unrest had been settled", another source reported.

Still I hadn't prayed.  Oh, I had pleaded with God to protect my little (five foot, eight inch) girl...but pray....take a mental stand based on spiritual laws that govern the universe and find my peace....not yet.  I still had another couple of hours of self-doubt and compassion-building "on my knees" parental agony to go through before I would be ready for that I guess. 

I continued to vacillate between "God is All" and "I need to be informed so that I can do something to fix this" thinking...yes, I know, I certainly had high regard for my global handyman (or woman) abilities....but I was desperate! Moms fix things...don't they? 

I emailed acquaintances (and even people I didn't know) in Sao Paulo begging them to go to the airport and sit with my daughter until her connecting flight took off.  I googled a map of the airport terminal and tried to plot out what would be the safest place for her to stay for ten hours out of harms way.  When I was exhausted and had exhausted every possible strategy for securing her well-being, I sat back in my chair and took a deep breath.  There on the screen of my computer was the portal to even more details (over 12, 000 hits listed) about Sao Paulo than I could have dreamed were possible to  obtain, and yet it had not given me one bit of information about my daughter's security.  I was still concerned, feeling unsettled, and my heart ached in a way I hadn't felt since she started kindergarten and I sat outside the door all morning waiting for her little blonde head appeared at lunchtime beaming with delight at her new adventures.

That was when I remembered who I was, why I was at camp, what I knew to be true about children's safety....whether on a raging river, a treacherous mountain peak, or in a rioting foreign city.   I turned to two sources of information I had forgotten for a few hours, even though they had always brought me peace of mind....the Bible and Mary Baker Eddy's Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures.  I had been using the ideas in these two books to help campers and counselors find freedom from fear for four weeks that summer and I knew in an instant that there would be an answer of peace for me there too.   I was not alone in the middle of the night, high in the mountains. far from help, and more importantly, neither was Hannah. I was up because I loved children...not just at camp or because they were "mine", but because it was my nature. And I was awake because this was the kid-related issue I needed to be praying about right at that moment. I wasn't praying because "my daughter" was in Sao Paulo, my daughter was in Sao Paulo because that was where my prayers for the safety and security of children was most needed at that moment. Hannah and I were part of a larger picture and we were both in God's care.  We were both secure in His omnipotent government of good, safe in his ever-aware omnipresent loving of us, and of all.  Every weary traveler, every frustrated heart lashing out in anger, every law enforcement official, every parent around the world was being held by His strong hand, nestled in Her loving arms and guided rightly by His clear, firm messages of direction, discipline, affection, and grace.

As I prayed with these thoughts such a deep and settled peace descended on my heart that I must have drifted off to sleep.  I was awakened before dawn to the phone ringing.  It was my daughter. She was just calling to say that she was in Sao Paulo airport, that it was boring and the food was way too expensive.  We talked for a few more minutes...me telling her I love her and to call when she arrived in Johannesburg (which she did later that night), her telling me she would. Then we hung up before the cost of the call was more than the food at the airport.   After I replaced the handset on the phone's base,  I noticed that my computer was still open and the screen was still showing the last page I had googled.

I chuckled to myself as I exited out of the search engine realizing that I had not shared any of the details of my middle of the night research,  or my concern, with my daughter.  We both had all the information that we needed and it was coming directly from the one true source of the security itself...God.  I quickly sent follow-up emails to the folks I had asked to go to the airport and sit with Hannah in Sao Paulo. I assured them that I had heard from her and that she was fine, thanking them for being patient with my anxious missives in the middle of the night.  I turned off my computer and tucked myself back into bed for the 20 or so minutes of rest that I could enjoy before I needed to be up for the camp staff inspirational gathering at daybreak.  I was at peace.  This would be a good day, we were all safe in His love....on mountaintop, in rivers, and in airports, schools, offices, homes, neighborhoods, and warzones....we would all be safe today.  


K