Word Feast : Because words are meant to be eaten. Rev 10:9

He held a little pink bucket in his hand. I only noticed it because it contrasted with his bright blue football shirt, which was soaking wet. He also had a gold chain hanging from his neck, which again contrasted with the pink bucket. There were a few specks of grey in his hair, but I couldn’t be certain it was grey, or just the sun reflecting off some droplets of water.

I watched him chase his daughter, running after her out the sea trying to splash some water out of the pink bucket onto her new pink costume. I’m not entirely sure that it was new, but it sure was bright, and she seemed scared of getting it wet. He did eventually soak her, not with the pink bucket, but by grabbing her into his soaking shirt.

I was eating my sandwich and watching this man play with his child, wondering when last they had been children together, and how a vegetable panini could be so oily. It dawned on me that we have to humble ourselves to really connect, and roasted peppers are the problem. All bright and fleshy, but full of oil.

Gary apparently has an excess of belly-button lint, and no-one knows where it comes from. We tried to figure it out for a while, but even Chelsea had no idea, and she knows lots of things, about life and her husband. It may seem like a silly conversation, but silly conversations are always indicative of people at peace, sitting on a beach eating paninis and watching children play. That kind of peace doesn’t just happen though: behind the silly conversations are always lots of serious ones. Sometimes peace has to be fought for, and only then do you have the freedom to talk about belly button lint, and where to get ice-cream.

The beach was stuck between rocks and dunes, which is not the kind of beach where ice-cream sellers walk around, so we had to drive around to find some. After some misleading advertising and 6-point turns in the rental car I settled on Fanta Orange, not because it’s the same as ice-cream, but because all the turning had unsettled my stomach. The Fanta helped though, and it reminded me how my mom used to give us flat Coke and Marie Biscuits to cure an unsettled stomach.

She would have loved the Tea Garden at Belvidere manor, with it’s view of the lagoon, green grass, white wrought-iron chairs in the shade of the bluegum trees. It was splendid: the tea, the scones, the ice-cream and chocolate sauce, all splendid. Our waiter had a booming voice and laugh, not like the one you put on for customers to get extra tips. He was splendid too, all dressed in white. He said ‘splendid’ a lot too, but it was fitting, because as I have said, it was a quite splendid there, in the shade by the lagoon.

I finished the day sitting on the whale-tail looking out on the Plettenberg bay Peninsula. Actually Andrew had stolen the whale-tail bench, and I had to sit on the normal wooden one. It was ok though, because I could keep an eye on him, which you need to do with someone who wears a pink sweatband, but he looked peaceful, probably having silly conversations in his head.

I was having a silly conversation in my head too, something about how to make a better cup of coffee by inverting the cylinder before extracting the coffee. But eventually the ocean and seagulls and setting sun and fishermen on the rocks got to me, and I stopped thinking about coffee, and thought about a man who humbled himself to connect with me, and fought to bring me eternal peace. He didn’t have a pink bucket or gold chain, but he is someone I can ask about belly-button lint. That sure is a mystery.

The hills flattened as we made our way across them, the crinkles in the road ironing out like the creases in my forehead, as weeks of tension finally starting to lift.

The mood shift started In Oudtshoorn, at a coffee shop with a name I cant remember, but I do remember the pancakes. They were cheap, but they tasted really expensive, with loads of sugar, cinnamon and lemon. We shared a pot of coffee and talked about the road ahead, the one taking us to hell. I’m not being dramatic, that’s just what the place is called, and it sounded like a good place to visit, even if only because Gary had told me stories of cooking an ostrich egg on top of a mountain there a couple years back. That seemed like a nice thing to do, but we forgot the ostrich egg.

‘The Hell’ is located somewhere between the Great and Little Karoo, deep in the Swartberg mountains. The Swartberg pass itself consists of 27km of hairpin dirt road, buffered by orange Quartzite walls, which were blasted away by convicts in the late 1800’s. The turn off to die Hel innocuously indicates a nature reserve, with no warning of the lonely 80km that wind their way into the pit of the desert.

Emptiness, like silence, is deeply unsettling, and the temptation to fill it quickly rises. But there’s not much to fill it with when you’re on a bike, especially if you leave your egg behind. After enduring the awkwardness for a while there seemed to be a tangible shift in the tension, perhaps when I realised that absence is not abandonment, not as a believer, nor in the desert.

After winding our way toward the moon we arrived on a plateau, overlooking the descent into hell. The valley was deep, and the mountains bare, but there was life at the bottom, a river even, with some pink and yellow flowers. Gary found the spot where he had cooked his egg two years back. It was a pretty epic moment for him, but it just made me miss our egg more.

We landed safely in the reserve and picked a spot under the trees. Lunch was steak sandwiches again, with soft chocolate, some flattened granola bars, and a couple battered apples. It felt wrong to be stretched out in the shade eating chocolate in the pit of hell. Maybe Dante got it wrong. On second thought, those apples were completely inedible, and I know they’re much better in heaven, since we all know Eve ate one when she knew she wasn’t supposed to, making life difficult for the rest of us. That must have been some apple.

The trip out of hell was easier than getting into it, which is sad because it would have made a better theological reflection if it were the other way around. But this isn’t really a theological reflection, it just coincidence that the place was called hell and somewhere on that trip I found my soul again.

It came back to me when we were back on the Swartberg pass, looking down on the crags of the Cape-fold rock. Somewhere back in Johannesburg I had lost perspective, which is an easy thing to do in that city. Sitting in the silence I vowed never to lose it again. I’m not sure how long that will last, but at least I know where to find it should I lose it again.

The sun seemed suspended in the sky as we winded our way back down the Outeniqua pass, through George, Wilderness, Sedgefield, Knysna and back to Plett. I’ll never forget the way the fading light reflected on the spray of the sea as we road South, nor how free I was. It felt good to have hell behind me, and the prospect of a steak and beer in front of me.

It turned out that the steak was bad, but it didn’t matter too much, not when you climb into bed with the world beneath you and not suffocating around you.

The road in front was filled with sunlight, but the horizon was black, like a giant yin-yang, the evil bit being the storm we were heading into. It’s a pretty vulnerable feeling, sitting on a motorbike heading into darkness. I kept picturing hailstones, and lightning, and getting tenderized before getting fried.

I shouted to the lady at reception that we’d settle the bill later, if we could just get the keys to the hut before the hailstones came. She seemed suspicious, but gave them over anyway. I jiggled the keys in the lock as the rain started, and we ran inside just as the hail came. It really did, banged all around the roof and windows and the motorbikes without people on them.

Whats with kettles in Bloemfontein? Over 10min and still only lukewarm. In desperation we tried to cook some water in the microwave, but had to peel moldy bread from the fan off first. Then hot coffee, and homemade choc-chip cookies. There’s only space for essentials when biking, so warm clothes get substituted for coffee and biscuits, obviously.

It was only 5pm, but we got in bed anyway, since it was hailing outside, and there was nothing else to do but read and play angry birds. I bet those pigs wished they had a warm bed and coffee and not a poultry storm hailing down.

I thought about that storm again, and riding into it. It was frightening really, feeling responsible for leading your friends into a storm, when you should perhaps be finding shelter. It reminded me of Church, and the things we were going through, especially the leaders. I hope they’re warm and safe and drinking coffee and eating biscuits.

The next morning we left early, to miss the storm that was brewing again. The office at the resort wasn’t open, so we left without paying, confirming the receptionists suspicions from the day before. Never trust bikers, I guess, especially if one has a pink sweatband and vuvuzela. We did eventually pay though, just so you know, at Gerhard’s place in Philippolis.

It was a Sunday morning, and we were hungry, and Gerhard was in bed, but the sign outside his window said breakfast, so we woke him. If he was perturbed he sure didn’t show it, piling eggs, bacon, toast and sausage on our plates. I respect Gary for being a vegetarian, and for giving me his share of bacon and sausage. It made me think of angry birds again, and the morality of throwing fowl at swine, never mind eating them.

Philippolis to Colesberg to Middelburg, and the weather was turning sour again. This time we weren’t so lucky, getting rained on for the next five hours. This is supposed to be a desert right? The highest recorded rainfall for the Karoo fell on the day we rode across it. We covered the Eastern Highlands in a cloud, not seeing more than five meters in front. I thought about being a baby, when you wore those baby jumpsuits, the ones that covered your whole body with the only hole being for your face, and wished I had one, but a waterproof one, to stop the rain seeping down my jacket, down my pants and sloshing around in my shoes.

We found a pub open in Middelburg, on a Sunday. No morals in the desert it seems, but we let it slide, because we had a warm place to spend a couple hours, and drink three pots of tea each. Later we walked around town to try and find a store open, to buy some more clothes, to replace the ones that were left behind to make space for the coffee and biscuits. I prayed for Jet stores that day, and their cheap clothing, and their willingness to open on Sundays so we could be warm and not die of drowning or hypothermia or both.

The relief didn’t last long. We rode for another hour and then stopped again in Graaf-Reinet, this time at a Spur restaurant. It was quite busy, being the only place open on a Sunday, and it seemed like the whole town had gathered to cheer on the bikers who bravely rode through the desert storm to stop in their town for hot chocolate and pudding. They didn’t really cheer, they more commented on the mess we were making, puddles of water and mud following us from the door to the table to the bathroom where we hogged the hand drier for about an hour, drying everything but our hands.

We ate nachos, with hot cheese, spicy but not-too-hot salsa, and warm guacamole. I drank two mugs of hot chocolate, and felt pretty sleepy afterwards. But we had only sixty kilometers more to go, so we headed out again, the rain getting even heavier.

We arrived in Aberdeen almost an hour later, a tiny desert town with dirt roads and a garage, and a church next door. I love the fact that the first thing you see from the road in these Karoo towns is the churches. Their steeples rise high above anything else on the horizon, providing a landmark to the civilization, a point around which the town can assemble. I wish it were like that in reality, not just in architecture, the worshipping community being a locus around which the rest of life revolved, allowing people to maintain perspective in the midst of a hurried life. It’s ironic that Karoo towns depict this, since they’re not ever in a hurry.

Aberdeen, a little desert town with about 10 people, two of which we happened to know, and who happened to welcome wet and muddy riders into their homes without fussing about the floors like the Spur. Sue had made us biscuits, fresh out the oven, which we had with coffee again, but only after showering for hours and draining all the water from this desert town. Wait, we brought the unseasonal rain right? So we had earned the water, payback to the sky really, using the water that it had used to freeze us, to make us warm again. Take that, sky.

Peter made us a bean stew, which was delicious. We probably would have had Karoo lamb, but as I have mentioned we had a vegetarian with us, who I respect, because he gave me all his bacon and sausage that morning, so it didn’t matter that I didn’t get to eat roast lamb. And warm homemade bread with lots of butter, and some wine, which we had brought as a gift, instead of warm clothes, because as I have said, space is limited on a bike.

I fell asleep while the others watched British comedy on tv, not caring about the likelihood of drooling in public, because it felt good to be warm, and full of nice food, and in the company of people who like having you there, even if you’re just sleeping.

The last day of traveling, and the sky was nice to us today, perhaps because we had lashed out at it by showering for hours. The clouds around started to open and clear as we approached the mountains separating desert from sea. Windmills, sheep, and mountainous bumps spotted the landscape. It doesn’t sound like much to look at, but it really is, especially when you’re on an empty road that stretches out straight ahead of you disappearing into the horizon.

Coffee stop in Willowmore, at Sophies’ antique store and coffee shop. We drank a good cup of coffee with some scones and jam, and sat by the fire. This is a freaking desert, and we’re sitting by a fire in the middle of summer? It was warm, and we got the chance to dry our gloves and socks and other articles of clothing, since no-one else was in the shop, and Sophie didn’t mind.

I had cut holes in an old pair of socks to use as arm-warmers, to stop the sneaky cold air from freezing my arm pits. It had worked pretty well, but smelled quite bad, roasting by the fire. You had to improvise on a bike, especially in unseasonal weather, with limited packing space.

Onto Uniondale, and the Prince Alfred pass, the last bridge between desert and sea. In three hours it felt like we had travelled three continents. It started with the semi-desert, then switched to farmlands in the Keurbooms valley, then onto views of the Outeniqua mountains that made me feel like we were in Switzerland. I’ve never been to Switzerland, but I’ve seen photos, and they looked exactly like those mountains.

We had a lazy lunch stop next to a river, between the crags of the pass. The stream was pleasant enough, and we had some good shade from the Yellowoods, and ate steak sandwiches on the rocks. It wasn’t real steak, nor real sandwiches, it was really just provita’s and cheese, but it felt like steak sandwiches. Gary ate them too, even though he’s a vegetarian. I guess his imagination was not up to ours so it was OK for him. We lazed about for quite a while and then set off, only to find a beautiful waterfall just a couple of meters down the road. That would have been a nice lunch stop. But the steak sandwiches were already finished, and we wanted to see the sea.

Which we did, just a few km’s later. Desert, farms, mountains and now seaside. Make that four continents in a day. It was good to arrive at such a stunning place in such perfect weather after a long trip. It’s testimony to the fact that sunshine really does follow the rain, and times of renewal follow times in the desert, on bike trips and in life. I thought about that, and how the rain and desert would come again, but in that particular moment it was enough to enjoy a nap in the setting sun, listening to seagulls and smelling the salt of the sea.

One of the best descriptions of a woman that I’ve heard is this:

Like a man, only more beautiful, and smarter in the ways of love and encouragement, and more deliberate in the ways of relationships*

I read that statement a long time ago, and it has always struck me as a beautiful, romantic even, description of the difference between men and women. But I have only recently discovered the depth to which this statement is true.

I was at a young adults function recently, where young men had the chance to ask some Godly women, wise in the ways of relationships and marriage, questions regarding their gender. One woman’s description of how she met her husband interested me.

She mentioned how her husband-to-be approached her one day, expressing his romantic interest in her, to which she responded with ‘Oh, I hadn’t thought of that’. Not exactly what a guy wants to hear after expressing his undying love for a woman. She went on to describe how she went away thinking about the possibility, noting his qualities and character, and proceeded to systematically fall in love with him.

I was stunned. How does a woman just ‘decide’ to fall in love with a particular guy? That seems so absolutely foreign to a man. From my experience, we men just happen to fall in love, or not, and it kinda seems out of our control.

I’m learning that it doesn’t seem to be the case with women, in general. I know it’s dangerous to make rules and generalisations, but perhaps Miller was right: Women are smarter in the ways of love…and more deliberate in the ways of relationships.

I don’t really want to make too big a deal of this, for it really only affects that initial stage of a relationship, the spark that gets the fire going. It seems that for men that spark is in the hands of something outside of himself, whereas a woman may have a lighter in her pocket, should a man show himself to be the right kind of person, the one she has perhaps been dreaming of.

Both men and women then, will end up at the place where love becomes a choice, based on something more solid than feeling, but the gate getting there is hinged slightly differently. A woman can push the gate open herself, but for a man, it either swings open before him or doesn’t. Of course he can choose to climb over the fence and get around the emotional gate, but that requires an seemingly superhuman effort.

As strange as it may sound, it seems to make sense that God would design us that way. I was speaking to a wise young lady about this, and she mentioned how God has given women that gift of control, so that they can protect their hearts, and have some measure of control against it falling into the wrong hands.

This may seem a small detail, but if it turns out to be true, it could have a host of implications. Like the fact that it proves a man invented the concept of Cupid and his arrows, as it is our gender more prone to random romantic intervention.

It also means a man should be the initiator of a romantic relationship, to avoid the rejection that could come should a woman try and take the arrow in her own hands. Even she cannot open his gate for him. It also gives a man the hope that a careful romantic pursuit coupled with Godly character may leave him with a very good chance of winning the heart of the one he has fallen in love with.

However, equally important is the fact that a man should be very, very careful about awakening love in the heart of a woman should that not be his intention. It turns out there is a lot more under his control than he would think. A dangerous responsibility.

Finally, it means that there is an ironic twist in an age-old adage, the one that says that women are more emotionally driven than men, who are only confined to the realms of logic. At least at this initial stage, it seems we men are the ones at the mercy of our emotions…

Maybe, at the least, this shows that when it comes to love and life, we are a little more complex than some hasty generalisations. But even in the complexity there are perhaps some elegant truths, which could end up saving us some pain, and pave the way for joy.

*Donald Miller, Searching for God Knows What

The very first words spoken by one human being to another were in the form of a poem:

“This at last is bone of my bones
and flesh of my flesh;
she shall be called Woman,
because she was taken out of Man” (Gen 2:23).

After around a hundred years of loneliness, Adam finally receives a suitable companion, someone created in his very likeness. He responds to this great gift with a song; one expressing the profound depth of his new relationship: We are different, yet one and the same.

Right at the origin of humanity we see the primary purpose of language: To build relationship. To develop intimacy. To reveal one the most mysterious of universal forces. Sadly, this language is now reserved for the romance novels, or for young couples in love, and even then the depth of relationship is cheapened to pure physical attraction.

Adam’s poem is a profound indication of the potentiality for relationship between God and man, and mankind with each other. This poem not only summarises the opening chapters of the bible, but sets in motion the theme for the rest of it: Covenant relationship. All of that, in one little poem. A few words spoken, pregnant with the anticipation of relationship.

And now? No-one walks around speaking in poems of course. I’ve yet to hear of a husband waking his wife up with a poem. It does come highly recommended. Still, can we not learn to use language primarily for the purposes of relationship again?

These days our everyday language is now strictly informational; we communicate mainly to receive or transfer the information required to get the list of tasks done for the day. It doesn’t help that we have an abundance of platforms available to share information, slowly taking our daily allotment of words and churning them into functional forms.

Language is supposed to be used primarily for relational purposes, then functional, and then informational. There’s nothing wrong with conveying information of course, but as long as that is our primary use of language we will be seen to be treating people merely as means to an end.

Perhaps that’s why there are so many lonely people who are not alone: surrounded by words but none of them inviting relationship.

Perhaps that’s why people feel so alone in the universe. Words dump out of the truck at heaven’s door, few of them inviting relationship. Requests for information, elbows jarring God into some functional form or the other. Then the few red envelopes, perhaps with poems; words inviting relationship.

Not many things make me feel closer to God than being outdoors in the beauty of creation. I’m pretty sure in heaven we’ll be living in tents, camped out next to a river flowing through a valley, with the sun hanging permanently in sunset position. And coffee, light roasted Kenyan, which never gets cold.

That may not be your version of heaven, you may for instance prefer to substitute the tent for a sturdier shelter of sorts, and perhaps swap the Kenyan for Ethiopian, but you have to admit that sitting in front of a sunset in a beautiful place makes it easier to believe that God is alive and close.

The problem is, I live in Johannesburg. As much as I love Jozi, there just isn’t an abundance of places to go and get the God feeling in your bones. I mean there’s golf courses, which is pretty darn close to making it into my heaven, and a few good parks, but otherwise we’re starved for beauty.

Are we? I once heard that a man need not travel the ends of the earth to find beauty in creation, if he were to just take a good look at his own backyard he could be lost for an eternity in wonder. Your garden may look as bare as my fridge, and have an equivalent amount of green stuff growing, but armed with a simple magnifying glass you wouldn’t make it to the neighbour’s wall in a day.

‘Just as no great travels are necessary to see the beauty of creation, so no great ecstasies are needed to discover the love of God‘. Those moments are great, to be sure, like the luxury of getting away to the mountains, but they’re not exclusive. The love of God is available to be experienced in your own back garden.

Yes, even the back garden. The place where you put all the rubbish, where the weeds grow, where the dogs mess hasn’t been cleaned up, and an old tyre lies around. Even there, in the back garden of your heart, God’s love resides. You may just have to take a closer look.

“And behold, the LORD passed by, and a great and strong wind tore the mountains and broke in pieces the rocks before the LORD, but the LORD was not in the wind. And after the wind an earthquake, but the LORD was not in the earthquake. And after the earthquake a fire, but the LORD was not in the fire. And after the fire the sound of a low whisper” (1 Kings 19:11-12)

‘If I see three oranges I have to juggle. And if I see two towers, I have to walk‘. These are the words of the crazy frenchman, Philippe Petit, after walking a tightrope strung between the two towers of the world trade centre. It was in answer to a police inquisition, since he had simply climbed out of one of the windows, shot a cross-bow to the other tower, and walked between them. They wanted to know what made him do something so crazy, thinking that perhaps he did it for publicity or for a sum of money from a sadist. Or that he was mad. They eventually sent him for psychic evaluation, but he turned out completely sane.

Commenting on this, Henri Nouwen* asks howcome we feel the need to give specific answers to some of life’s deepest questions. Most of the time, our answers sound pretty ridiculous anyway:

‘Why do you love her?’

‘Why did you become a Pastor?’

‘Why do you pray?’

‘Why do you believe in God?’

How do you answer those questions?

‘Because she’s beautiful?’

‘Because I hated my other job?’

‘Because my Pastor told me I must?’

‘Because I’m scared of hell?’

Perhaps there’s no better answer than: ‘If I see three oranges I have to juggle. And if I see two towers, I have to walk‘. Would you ask a child why they decided to play with the ball? How would they answer that question?

Maybe the best answer to some of life’s deepest questions is actually a non-answer:

‘Because I saw her and I loved her’

‘Because I must’

‘Because He’s there’

‘Ditto’

Sometimes the most meaningful answer is not really an answer at all, in that it may not satisfy the skeptic, but somehow it serves to explain the action anyway. Philippe’s answer satisfied the policeman, and they let him go without charging him, as long as he performed a tightrope walk as a charity event for children.

And so he shot another tightrope between two towers, and continued to walk.

* Henri J.M Nouwen: The Genesee Diary, pg 109-111.