Give me hope Johanna
There’s this song my mom hates. It’s about this chick called Johanna who presumably can give “me” hope. My mom hates it because we had a domestic worker at our house whose name was Johanna which, let’s just say, didn’t give any of us hope... (She never pitched up on time and her food was especially “interesting”)
What this catchy 90’s beaut does teach me is that even Johanna can bring hope. There is sometimes an expectation on ministers to bring or magically create hope, when indeed it is the “normal” day to day people who have the responsibility to expose glimmers of hope in our society.
Today I encountered two very different but also similar types of hope.
This morning Dewald Hoffmann (friend), Corali Theron (girlfriend) and I visited Rosen Castle day care and Pre-Primary school in Bellville. Esmé van Heerden, whose dream it was to create a space where kids get a huge advantage going into Primary school, life and at the same time feeling safe, greeted us in the foyer. I’ve known her for 20 years. She’s even powdered these sweet old baby bottom cheeks of mine (obviously when I was still a baby). Esmé’s warm heart and eyes tell us more of her dream than any of her words could ever. As we walked through the castle corridors the way in which she greeted every staff member (cleaning staff and teachers alike) on their name and knowing each one’s story I felt hope in my heart. She reminds me of a female Jesus, but in Bellville. Her dream is that the human soul reaches its intended fulfilment through education and enough comfort, peace, support, understanding and love.
In South Africa’s current state in which schools are run, where just getting through the most kids we can in order to keep the Minister of Education happy, this visit indeed placed an eschatological (which refers to the future times) hope in my heart.
The second visit was in connection with the transformational engineering that my church will be embarking on in this holiday (a.k.a an outreach) to Khayalitsha’s Way of Life Church. I felt the need in our transformational engineering program (outreach program) to plant some trees in Khayalitsha. I feel the tree has a significant role to play in the reconciling of people. It’s a deep beautiful symbol of growth and flourishing. Also in the germination process the seed bursts into lime green hope after looking like it’s about to die. Makes me think of people and that we sometimes look like we’re not going to make it and then we (hopefully) burst into life again.
This initiated a search for sponsors for plants to take with us for planting and also for a gift when we meet new friends in Khayalitsha. A new, but already good, friend of mine, Walton Kruger, introduced me to Oom Koos and Oom Kallie (Uncle Koos and Uncle Kallie for the really English readers). Retired, but not at all tired, Oom Kallie offered me and Dewald some coffee and sweet biscuits (super old school, but I’m a student…so I thought it was kinda badass, free biscuits!!) as we sat down around what they called the gossip table. This gossip table is where they say the real Kingdom of God gets exposed and they gossip about where they can become part of more of the Kingdom. All these grey heads do all day is basically plant Spek trees and hand it over to people who despises injustice and want to become friends with people they’ve never met before. They promised more than a 100 trees to be delivered to me before the transformational engineering starts in Khayalitsha at the end of June.
These two stories are stories of glimmers of hope exposed by the normal “Johanna’s” of our day and age.
Where are you exposing the Kingdom…?