• The Sacred Writings of the World’s Great Religions – S. E. Frost, Jr. – published in 1943
• The Philosophy of Nietzsche – Hand-written note suggests it was bought in 1941
• The Basic Teachings of the Great Philosophers – S. E. Frost, Jr. – published in 1942, this is a 1943 reprint

These books were given to my father by his father in the early 70s. I did not really know my grandfather, he passed away when I was practically still a toddler. I hear he was slightly eccentric, but a brilliant man, an artist and writer. Oupa Nel. J Nel van der Merwe. (J was for Jaco, probably from Jacobus.) With Izak Wilhelmus van der Merwe who wrote under the pen name “Boerneef” as his cousin (though I don’t know if they were *first* cousins, and Boerneef could be one generation earlier too), I suspect the Ceres van der Merwe’s have some good artist-type genes.

I don’t know much about my grandfather’s worldview. (Actually, I don’t know much about my father’s either. ) However, he wasn’t one to leave books in a pristine state: I see many margin notes and other writings on blank pages. What intrigues me is how much my own views have in common with my grandfather’s. Or even just my interests… How much of our worldview predispositions are due to our genes? Those combine with our culture, our memes, that we inherit from those around us.

Wrote my grandfather to my father, in the front cover (translation below, with the usual disclaimers about how impossible it is to maintain the same nuances in a translation):

Aan Jac — Vir jou latere lewe, seun. [Lees eers bladsy 94, 150 ens.]

Dié een man het die Wêreld van Denke (filosofie) diep getref. Hy laat my baie aan Salomo se wonderlike boeke in die Bybel dink.

As ‘n mens sy jeug ken kan jy verstaan hoekom hy “kinderagtig” is m.i. i.v.m. die Christus (wat liggaamlik sterk moes gewees het. Dink aan C. se reiniging v.d. Tempel, hoe C. oral geloop het ens.)

N. is verantwoordelik vir die berugte sin: “God is dood.” (Verg. Dolf v N: “Die Son Struikel”) maar m.i. wou hy daarmee die mensdom weer God laat her-”sien”. Van Wyk Louw het ‘n gedig oor N. geskryf. (Sien agter.)

‘n Belangrike, diep, belangrike boek hierdie. Op één stadium van my lewe het dit vir my baie beteken.

But it is not easy going.

Pa   1973

---

Jac, asseblief:–
Lees éérs Ecce Homo, dán Zarathustra

To Jac — For your later life, son. [First read page 94, 150 etc.]

Jac, please:–
First read Ecce Homo, then Zarathustra

As a Ceres Van der Merwe, two generations ago, I reckon he was certainly still Boer in heritage and culture, but being an intellectual, having studied art, philosophy and psychology, and apparently comparative religion, he must have been further removed from our Calvinist heritage than most.

In the back of the “Great Philosophers” book, Nel wrote a bit about his own views of the divine, apparently similar to those of Pascal, Eliot and others. He contrasts his views with the views of the rationalists.

The Eternal begins where our “words” and reasoning ends — that is why I choose Art … music, poetry, painting, etc. It goes down into your guts. J.N.

On the artistic side, somewhat opposed to the “rationalists” (specifically the views of the so-called “Rationalistiese Vereniging van UK” — a society at the “University of Cape Town” I presume) and in contact with our religious heritage and tradition, while also a “liberal” like most intellectuals (which I deduce from his comments on “conservative Cape’s reaction to NP van Wyk Louw’s divorce in the back of the Nietzsche book), his views certainly fascinate me.

I think I inherited enough of the “artistic genes” and found the necessary memes to have a good appreciation for my grandfather’s views. I don’t have any trouble “bridging” to them, I can feel the truth in his views. At the same time, I think I’m standing a bit closer to the “rationalists” than he was: it could have been interesting to have a deeply philosophical conversation about such matters, to see how well I could bridge in the other direction. It all seems to be the flip-side of the same coin to me, the artistic side, is to me all about developing an artist’s appreciation of the human experience of this universe.

And with his margin notes and underlining of passages he considered key, reading these books might serve as a decent alternative to that conversation. It would be both an opportunity to see how much my genetic and general Afrikaner-culture inheritance already shaped my memes and interests in that same direction, and a path for more direct memetic inheritance. My father did not get around to reading these. With a career in engineering, technology and business (electronic media) and a strong interest in science that he imparted to me, I’m not sure how much formal philosophy he ran into. I will read these on my father’s behalf, and I won’t be waiting for my “later life”.

It was never my intention to not write a blog post this Easter weekend, but I have “procrastinated” up to the point where I have to say “well, I haven’t gone back to work yet, it is still Easter weekend for me”. My plans changed a couple of times, as better ideas came along. In the end, I found the best elsewhere, and will just point there.

Last week Thursday (iirc) I had a brief chat (IM) with a colleague/mentor that is of Jewish heritage. And had myself reminded “Easter” is not the current narrative of everyone in my circle. Passover. Commemorating the return from exile in Egypt. This is, according to my understanding, the primal narrative of Israel. (Primal in all three meanings of the word.) a narrative that shapes lives. I spent some time pondering that this weekend, but know I lack any experience of the Jewish tradition and what meaning and impact it would carry for me, had that been the tradition I was born into.

Friday night I saw Gran Torino. Following the movie, I let my thoughts drift, as inspired by the movie. Of course, they were already drifting before the movie even finished. (It caused the first change of plans: I want to write a bit about the movie… That post remains in the pipeline, but it has a prerequisite that you first see the movie. Now you get some more time to do so. ) But yes, following the movie, we had some drinks at the Outback Lodge. One member in our group has a Catholic heritage, and went to church that morning. I decided my church sermon for the weekend was the movie, it had more impact than many a church service. Then the conversation drifted in the direction of homoeopathy, “holistic”/”alternative” medicine, and the anti-vaccination movement. Simultaneously entertaining, uncomfortable, and thought provoking. Today, or yesterday, can’t remember, I did some more research on Gardasil, the vaccination against HPV-caused cervical cancer. More on that later.

Saturday, I joined a colleague and some friends for a “braai/picnic”. No, it wasn’t a braai, it was part Swiss, part Russian. During that picnic, conversation drifted in a way that had me sharing a bit about one of my “hobbies” (that which I keep myself busy with when I’m not working). I did not mention this blog, but this blog flows out of that hobby. Saturday night became a late night, I joined friends from the previous night’s movie, to go check out something of the Zurich nightlife. And had my jacket stolen. (And another in our group was also a victim of jacket-theft.)

Sunday I went for a cycle, having not really slept enough. But it was great, a relaxed bike ride from home, over to the Griefensee, around, and back. About 48km. I learned a number of valuable things, and a number of more mundane things. I learned the many different meanings the word “Schmuck” can have (I was cycling with someone who knows enough German and Yiddish).

This Monday evening, I finally came across the inspiration that would provide the meat to this post. I let myself be moved by a “multimedia account” of Ikon’s Easter “sermon” — Ikon is the community in which Peter Rollins finds himself. Being a Jesus- It aims to experience Easter through the perspective of Judas. You, me, everyone, as Judas. When you speculatively place yourself in another’s shoes, your understanding of them really does get fleshed out. More on that in a second post — it’s been a long time since I published two posts in one day. (I’m aiming for before & after midnight though.)

Last Thursday night I had another “down”. Those nice times when you suffer some death-from-the-inside. I have become thankful for those times though, because I know I survive them, walk on resurrected the next day, with new focus on and drive towards that which I feel is important. To me. A couple of months ago it was quite a bit more grim, it used to take longer. The ability to bounce back within a day is a blessing, it takes the sting out of the downs. It truly is in those moments of grappling that real clarity is found. (Despite the vagueness of that clarity. ) From there, I went and had a most exxcellent weekend.

Moving on, some actions, related to the weekend as a whole, not to Thursday night in particular:

Death to the No Notes List

This feels like another brave step for me. A necessary one, that will probably again have much impact internally, while looking like hardly a breeze on the outside.

In life, we play many roles. We get to choose what roles we play. Clint Eastwood got to choose, in a more literal sense. In a fictional sense, his character in the movie chose a role. But we also have roles.

Sometimes it is best that roles don’t bleed into one another. You don’t want to see Forrest Gump bleed into Captain John H. Miller in Saving Private Ryan. And your private life should ideally not influence your professional one.

What is the No Notes list? It is more than just a list, it represents an attitude. So I’ve now been in Switzerland for 7 or 8 months, depending on how you count. Upon moving here, starting a new job, my first job, I had a rather weird mix-up of that role-separation going on.

I had decided to “keep things separate”, one symptom of which was that I created a “No Notes” list on Facebook. This was to avoid advertising this blog to friends I added to that list, since this blog represents a side of me I didn’t want to show to everyone I had “just met”. For two reasons. One, I didn’t want to be misunderstood. (Judas, misunderstood? Still, he played the role he had to play. “Had”, which meaning? “The role he had”? Or “Did what he must”? Both?) Two, I’ve experienced the challenge of writing for a diverse audience. It can be gruelling, because for different audiences, you would choose a different writing style. And now I’m adding yet another audience.

But Two is in a way just an externalised rationalisation of One: “I’m a chicken”. I enjoy writing for a diverse audience, and I often revel in not being clearly understood. The greater point here is not for me to be understood, whereby I’m placing myself on a pedestal that is a blog, saying “See? This is me, the world deserves to understand me! Watch! Make me feel special!” The point is to encourage people to think, explore, learn, be challenged, build bridges, seek peace in diversity. For that, I really don’t need to be understood. So the only thing holding me back is “pride”. Not wanting to be badly misunderstood. (Lacking the faith of Judas? One interpretation. See the next post.)

And besides, we each need only really need to be understood by a small group of people, and I’m very fortunate to have already found such a group of friends that understand me, even if we don’t all have contact very often, even if we’re very far apart. I still am, like any blogger really, a schmuck with a podium on which I prance. A vain, egotistical, self-absorbed narcissist. Who minds not using a tonne of tautology. And I should go to lengths to avoid excessive navel gazing, and return the favour others have shown me: to seek to understand them, for who they are. Enough with the navel gazing. Let’s move on. (And I should give myself some credit, this paragraph does exaggerate, in order to highlight.)

Role separation… There is role separation, and then there is role separation. Living a lie is extremely unhealthy. I’ve experienced this already, I know this. My first experience at explicitly outing myself, as a “secular humanist” at the time, in 2007, was extremely scary, and extremely liberating. And the world just continued turning. And views continued drifting, and I was able to approach things from the other side, from where they all started to make so much more sense. But I digress again.

The point: I emerged a healthier, more “holistic” person. Fragmenting myself yet again is downright stupid. And doesn’t accomplish role separation anyway, that kind of fragmentation could even be the cause of one aspect bleeding into the other, in a detrimental way. Embracing things together, I seek a healthy balance.

Additionally, 8 months in, I’m much more settled into my new role, I understand it a lot better now. With that better defined, the feeling of “this needs more explicit separation” is undermined.

Another interesting tidbit: the path I started with the “No Notes” list lead to the removal of a couple of links as well, since links also advertise my blog. (Duh!) I’ll restore those links, and probably return to my previous level of random organic search traffic. Joy. I have a love-hate relationship with that traffic. See “Commenting Policy” below.

Community

Recently I re-tuned my Facebook and Google Reader. The aim: to be able to more regularly read the things I want to read. (Mostly: tuning “home pages” to show feeds I’m interested in.) Thereby: more attention towards the people I care most about, and the blog feeds I find most value in, the most challenging and “mind expanding” , given my context.

Just over a week ago, I read Not that it’s a competition, but… – and got all woozy about cool communities again. Are there any communities like that here, in Switzerland? In Europe? I would so love to check something like that out! Or something like Ikon? Some other emergent guys in Europe? Switzerland? Curious, I’ll have to search. I’d enjoy getting involved in either.

Alternatively, I may remain the nomad, the anthropologist, investigating things from a slight distance. There are a number of traditions I’d love to check out, experience, but it would depend on whether they’re open to… um… “tourists” like me. I will continue chatting with people, aiming to experience their tradition from their perspectives, understanding what it means to them.

And of course, challenging things in some sensible fashion, extending invitations to think more broadly, when I find something that seems harmful. Like anti-vaccination attitudes. (Nothing to do with religion in the specific-sense here, though in the broad-sense, sure.)

Commenting Policy

And, of course, my little community here. I’ve not forgotten you all, even if my posting frequency has suffered. And mengelmoes, my software-in-the-pipeline to solve all my “commenting policy” and community building concerns, remains… uh, well… in the pipeline. More efficiency to my use of free time. More dedication and focus. We’ll get there.

The point, as always, is to try to give everyone a voice, while finding a way to “gently encourage” them to use it in the most useful way possible. Reward the valuable and useful. Not like this guy, bob, who commented on Don’t Consider Christian Fundamentalism “Violent”, of all posts:

You guys are stupid as hell. God isn’t real. America needs to become more like Europe. We need to be free from the shackles of religion and move on as a race.

Who on earth was he talking to, anyway? He had no idea how many in that discussion were really religious or Christian, who were skeptics, humanists… or Americans for that matter (one?)… And there most certainly weren’t any stupid people commenting on that post. Except, of course, maybe by bob’s bizarre definition of stupid and smart.

I left his comment in the moderation queue. The ideal: any comment should be able to see the light of day. In some way anyway. (Consider the “-1″ score on the Slashdot moderation system, for example.) Furthermore, people need to be encouraged to learn how to express their sentiments without being a schmuck about it. You know, get smart, learn how to have an intelligent discussion. (They need to stop taking cues from the likes of Bill Maher, who seems to think humiliation, and apparently lies, is a good way of communicating ideas?)

The way you say things often carries more weight than that which you are trying to say.

If—

If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too;
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or being lied about, don’t deal in lies,
Or being hated, don’t give way to hating,
And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise:

If you can dream — and not make dreams your master;
If you can think — and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build ‘em up with worn-out tools:

If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it all on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breath a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: "Hold on!"

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with kings — nor lose the common touch,
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,
If all men count with you, but none too much;
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,
And — which is more —

— Rudyard Kipling

Many people hold onto the idea of heaven. It is a comforting thought. It is something to look forward to. Whatever. Have you ever wondered, if this life is all you get, what your contribution is in eternity? Is your life an eternal life, as it is, if you don’t have the luxury of life after death? How will people remember you?

*sigh*, enough melodrama about life. Our dogs, we will remember fondly.

So there I was, pouring over a couple of books by Borg, Crossan and Spong, wondering if they have Armstrong or McLaren, while considering both what my hosts in the Bay area would appreciate (a tough one, McLaren/Bell/Martoia vs Borg/Crossan/etc, with considerations for both the potential impact on individuals, relationships, and community), and also what I’d want to read next. What would best supplement “Meeting Jesus Again, for the First Time”? Another Borg, or rather Crossan? Shall I read some Spong? There’d be interesting material there, but I’m also always looking for material useful for other people. Spong has become too notorious in certain circles, reducing his usefulness. Crossan then?

And then it happened.

I turned my back on the Religion section, drifted over to the Sci-Fi section, and picked up a Robert Heinlein instead…

Having spent some time pondering the job market, while talking to numerous characters in the Bay area and the Valley, I’ve been doing some reconfiguring. Yes, Hugo is slowly waking up to the real world. The last few years have been good enough (as long as you choose your metric correctly), but employment beckons. And it has high demands. When jumping into that sink-or-swim sea, my distractions should not be too time consuming.

Reprioritising is not as simple as adjusting nice levels on processes running on some CPU. The mind has grooves. I need to level out one groove, and start cutting a new one. (Or arguably rediscovering and developing an older groove.) Hence, I need to cut down on “serious reading material” that isn’t related to the new groove. I’ve likely already done some sabotaging of my career by worrying about religion these last few years, it’s high time to start recovering what’s left.

And yet, I’ve effectively invested in “religious studies” these last few years. I do intend to get some return on that investment. By that I mean there is still a contribution I’d like to make (and ideally more significantly so than just in normal day-to-day interactions). However, I must probably stop obsessing about how to package it, stop obsessing about diplomacy, and simply throw what I want to say out there. Extra effort into making the primary message of a post more accessible to a broader audience is probably not worth it.

I’m leaning increasingly towards more of a humanist focus, at least in my mind. Whether this will spill over into blog posts, I don’t know, but having a positive focus will help me avoid being dragged down by headaches in the future. The current queue of post ideas will likely still be written and published without too many adjustments, but hopefully the effects of my new (personal) focus will have a positive impact on the writing. I intend to emphasize compassion and parallels between diverse traditions, in an attempt to bring attention to the fact the we are all really in the same boat*, even if we don’t always realise it. Maybe I could focus on helping develop a “post-church spirituality”, to employ what might be one of the South African blogosphere’s buzzwords. (If you’re not sure what “spirituality” is yet: think a sense of “reverence”, a feeling of wonder at existence, an appreciation, or something along those lines.)

I’m also eager to drop a few twigs into the cogs of the New Atheist Publicity Machine. (Sweet: I replaced the propaganda word, “propaganda”. I’m still not quite happy with the phrase, but I’m too lazy to find a better edit. Suggestions?) I have been avoiding pushing twigs in that direction while I was contemplating mutually exclusive directions this blog could take. (Yes, twigs in gears are picky, the stuff I’d done in the past was rather something like haphazard and meaningless stone throwing. ) It’s great that the average level of humanity’s consciousness is being raised, but I’d like to see if I can add my two cents in aid of raising the level of the “new atheists’” consciousness as well, still believing that encouraging compassion and mutual understanding all around can only be beneficial. (As long as you don’t get paralysed by compassion, naturally. Fat chance of that happening though.) Oh, and those are South African cents, I’m trying to destroy any remaining delusions of grandeur here. This’ll return to being “my personal little blog”.

Facebook people: I’m still curious if there’s any yay’s or nay’s when it comes to the question of whether I should continue importing my blog into Facebook notes. Any feedback on that, anyone?

*I wonder if Kevin is still around. Was he able to hold on through the rough roller-coaster ride that I experienced the last few months to be?

So here I am, trying to motivate myself to start cooking. For myself. By myself. Tough? Maybe a good exercise of self discipline. In an ideal world, I’d maybe find some partners in crime: either get a little cooperative thing going, or otherwise just find some victims to come over for dinner, that should serve as decent enough motivation. However, I cannot exactly entice them with “free food”, when it costs a good home meal’s petrol to get here (for those living in Stellenbosch). I’m going to have to get good at the food thing, and quickly. Though, that’s probably easier than getting this place tidy: too much junk with nowhere to go. Bother.

I bet my oven is warm already. For the first time ever, probably. Gotta go…

(Random ramblings below.)

I’ll skip past my fictional-philosophical speculation on the principle of “equal trade” (drawing largely from the Anime series Fullmetal Alchemist), and ideas like balancing karma with mortification of the flesh, and get back to modern reality… We are typically drained by day-to-day activities, and we need some way or place to “recharge”, to recover from stresses, pressures, and bottled emotion. Finding this way or place is very valuable, fundamental to sanity and peace of mind. I’ve been playing with various ideas, figuring out what works for me. There are many sources, but I’m glad I’ve rediscovered one that is particularly effective in my case: no, not television, science fiction! Fiction can be a wonderful and “harmless” sink for “bad karma”. (Harmless for us, if not for the poor characters in the parallel fictional reality. Ah, alchemy.) Time to do more reading, methinks.

Now Star Trek is by no means “good sci-fi” (in fact, it is arguably bad), but it was very entertaining and relaxing nonetheless. And it fills a little gap in my education. Now I’ve also met Spock, Kirk and Scotty personally, instead of only through second-hand references. With mentions of common ground necessary for communication, and talk of whale talk, I recognise a piece of my own madness in the minds of its creators. Ah, sweet, connection! “Resonance”!

Save the whales!

If I had to have a gripe about something, it wouldn’t be the corny cliché’s, it wouldn’t be the time travel, it would be the absurdity of trying to repopulate humpback whales from only two specimens, talk about a genetic bottleneck! Gaah! Give me time travel any day, much more realistic.

Live long and prosper – Shalom!

If the courtship proves successful, it will be followed by good hard work, in the tech/software industry. At forty hours per week. (Hmm, unless I negotiate a four-day work-week, doesn’t that sound tempting? Hehe, student memes still rule my mind.) It looks like a good place for me to try to make my contribution.

Amateur science and amateur theology will be granted some of my free time. I’ve gained some knowledge and experience while procrastinating on my thesis, knowledge I still want to share and develop further, at least this year anyway. Maybe I’ll loose interest before year’s end. In the meantime, I’ll keep the melodrama in check by maintaining a little more distance. (A full-time job will also ground me better than somewhat frustrating contract work.)

A couple of potentially controversial posts are coming up this week, I will do my utmost to maintain a neutral or journalistic tone. I still reserve the right to editorialise though. The pot needs a good stir every so often.

Well, it is over. Some pieces of advice, on the odd chance my past self finds some way to read the future, in order to improve my past. Though what difference would that really make to my present? I should rather be hoping to improve my future…

• Give yourself more than 24 hours to prepare for a thesis defence.
• Don’t accept contract jobs until your thesis defence is a thing of the past. You will use it as a reason to start preparing too late
• If you end up with only one day, try to not still be distracted by other things. And don’t panic. It’s bad for productivity.
• Try to get around to practising your presentation the day before. Doing so for the first time in the morning before a 9am appointment should be considered foolish.
• Ideally sleep more than three hours (achieved by adhering to the previous advice).
• Don’t underestimate traffic, don’t pitch at your 9am presentation at the very last minute.

Um, well, yea, I know, this might all seem like “common sense”, but that is generally more rare than the “common” adjective seems to indicate.

Now things get messy: I’m cancelling my entry in the Go tournament. I must prepare to suffer the wrath of TD (the Tournament Director). In particular, the tournament director responded:

By the power vested in me as TD, I FORBID you to withdraw!

I quake in fear, not knowing what my fate will be should I not heed the TD’s commandment. What will the TD do? Condemn me to an eternity in purgatory, where there is no Go, and only Chess? Oh, the horror! I quake with fear! Purgatory? No! It will be hell!

Nevertheless, a man has to do what a man has to do. A man has to eat, you know. That survival-instinct in this reality is simply too strong. The thesis defence calls. A battle of epic proportions, duelling with the wits of the guardians of the scroll, them that go by the moniker examiner. And no, unlike previous battles of similar sorts, the enemy no longer has the decency to fight an honour-bound one-on-one battle. This will be a battle with multiple simultaneous opponents. (Will our protagonist survive? Will he live to see another day?)

This is not entertainment, kids, this is reality. The final showdown occurs behind closed doors. No media, no spectators, just baited breath awaiting the final outcome. Kinda like that huge let-down in Mission:Impossible III, where they only show Mr.Scientology enter the building, and then come crashing out a window a while later. No details, because they had already pulled out all the stops, already showed the most impossible mission possible, in Mission:Impossible II. The fools.

I must agree, M:I III really isn’t worth watching. A whole bunch of same-old same-old with regards to preparations, predictable plot twists, and no real climax. (Though, actually, I can’t remember, and I’m just making this up as I go along.) The same applies to a thesis defence. Spectators can watch the presentation at the start, but get chased out when the real fight begins. As such, I don’t think there’s much point in inviting anyone. I don’t think I’ll even tell you that my defence is apparently taking place at 9am on Tuesday. Besides, spectators aren’t even allowed to chant their support for their favourite team…

In other news, I’ve postponed my US embassy appointment. (Actually, it seems you can’t cancel. I just made a new appointment and am simply not pitching for tomorrow’s. Eish, nasty. Will they use that against me?) Once my defence is finished, assuming I survive, there will be one last hurdle in this chapter of the odyssey: making corrections to the document, getting it bound in book form, then trading it in for the scroll of the Master. The scroll of power, the scroll of door-unlocking. At that point, I will also get back to doing the Job Search thing and making holiday plans.

And now our ill-fated hero retreats to his training grounds, to hone his senses, train his reflexes, increase his stamina, visualise the battle, and play recognise-animals-in-the-clouds. Drats, no clouds today.

So what to do? I’m considering the correspondence course for more freedom with regards to time. However, they tell me the correspondence course is outdated, that it would be better to do the Tuesday-evenings course. What happens when you miss four Tuesdays in a row? (Or five, even?) Or when there’s something else I have to do on a Tuesday night?

Personally, I’m unable to become a Shofarian, the “contract” you sign when you join has some clauses I am unable to agree with. My “spiritual home” remains Stellenbosch Gemeente. Their Bible School is “interdenominational”, so that is not a problem. The only thing I’m going to miss out for failing to sign the contract, is F3/F4/F5. (I have done F1 and F2, Shofar’s first two “Foundations” courses, more on that later.)

Now I’ve gotta run around and get my paperwork in order for the US Embassy. Eish… too little time, I bet they will deny me a visa. This weekend is also problematic: I should prepare my thesis defence, I want to go trail running with my uncle, I want to watch a movie and attend a concert with my sister, but I’ve signed up to play the Go tournament. In addition to signing up, I’ve offered a lift to two other people… gah! Seems I should be more hesitant to jump into commitments?

The first thing on my sporting calendar is the Cape Argus Pick n Pay Cycle Tour. I don’t know what to expect, being in rather bad shape. If I didn’t have a thesis gut, I’d feel quite confident about aiming for a sub 3:10, achieved by dreaming about a sub 3:00. (What a dream.) As it is, I’d ideally like to drop 5kg in the next 5 weeks. Not quite realistic, but the point is I’ve got to do a lot of cycling. I’m trying to train six times a week. Once I get work and thesis defence out of the way, I could even do more than one session per day.

This post is an invitation to any sports-people that might be reading this. If you are interested in joining me for a road cycle or a mountain bike outing, let me know. I’m living somewhere between Somerset West and Stellenbosch. In between I’m doing some running as well. We have an informal little Stellenbosch Trail Runners group, currently organising via Facebook. We’re currently doing a weekly run. (Thanks to Pieter for organising!) Again, let me know if you’re interested.

Among other places, I’m attending Shofar again. And this is where people might look at me and wonder and potentially distrust me, because I’m a bit of an odd one out. So I thought I’d lay it all out. Again. Hopefully concisely.

As I hope most of my regular readers know by now, my past is littered with religion, probably like most South Africans’. I also hope everyone realises the great diversity that is found within religions, even within “Protestant” Christianity. Every time you walk into a church, you are carrying a whole lot of baggage with you, which has a great influence on how you perceive and experience each particular church. Also, every church has both good and bad, and it is up to the attendees to make the best of their experience or membership in any church.

A few years ago, I spent three months at Shofar. As a result of the baggage I brought with me, I got hurt. If I had different baggage, things may have been different. Since then, I have spent a lot of time and effort dropping my baggage, while I looked for and learned more about Jesus. At last I’m at a place where my mind is clear of old nonsense. I’m at a place where I feel ready to attend Shofar again. I’m at a place where I can hopefully recognise the good as well as the bad. (Again, good and bad is found in every church, in every religion, in every institution. In everything really.)

Attending. I don’t think merely attending makes me a Shofarian, eh? So yes, I am just a visitor. I am a seeker. I am an inquisitive person, with very many friends and family members at Shofar, friends and family members I love, and care about, and wish to understand. So I am back at Shofar, when time permits. (I originally announced my return to Shofar in mid December.) I am back at Shofar to learn more about the things Jesus stood for and against.

I ran out of steam this week. I guess it was bound to happen. Too little sleep, too much forcing-the-mind-to-act-sharp with mental discipline and willpower, too little food (lost some weight though, yay!), too much grappling with language… too little yin, too much yang? Too little earthing/grounding, too much fantastical thinking.

Yea, too much fantastical thinking. I’ve been pondering the parallels between fiction and reality, something I find particularly intriguing. It seems this direction of thought risks blending the two to an unhealthy or even dangerous degree when combined with too little sleep and a couple of other stress factors. I should probably read some Carl Jung if not something more recent: something about his ideas of archetypes and the “collective unconscious”. As fun as reinventing the wheel is, going mad without making any particular contribution is particularly pointless.

So yes, I have lost touch with reality at times. I hope it didn’t show too clearly on my blog. I’ve mentioned the most significant time before: the first weekend of December. A “religious experience” or a “brief psychotic break”, under the influence of too much caffeine, too little sleep, too much stress, and another element I can only share in a few months’ time, to protect the innocent. Quite a remarkable and exhilarating experience. An experience that leaves me with a potential understanding of a potential source of many of the world’s religious traditions, ideas and techniques that I apply when doing endurance grinding, whether that be working overtime and getting my thesis done or finishing a gruelling endurance race, and ideas or insights into diverse aspects of human culture that provides me with surprising amounts of self-confidence. And no, this wasn’t all in one epiphany, a lot of this was discovered in the process of playing pattern recognition in the following six weeks.

Through all this, I was in need of someone that could understand where my mind is at. Someone that I could discuss this with. (Do any of my lurkers feel they understand the weirdest posts on this blog? E.g. those by Jess?) I suppose it is madness to think someone else has the same madness I have, eh? I suppose I should have knocked on the head-shrinker’s door. Maybe I should still do so, as I will undoubtedly be revisiting some of the ideas in the future. Having more insight into what’s what could help me separate the interesting stuff from the purely insane.

So, as an anti-dote, instead of throwing myself at the ground again (which does work wonders, don’t get me wrong), I’m thinking of throwing myself into Go for the next three weeks, when not working on projects or my thesis defence. Rationale: the SA Open and African Oza is on the second weekend of February, and I’m extremely rusty. I have some old rivals that I have to do battle with, to prove they haven’t left me too far behind in their dust. A year is a long time…