Jason challenged us at the beginning of the Advance, to be open to the strange and stranger; to lean into that which is out of our control or comfort zone. I do not know about anyone else, but my mind is still grappling with the experience in Cape Town.\u00a0 So much to unpack, but I have not had sufficient time to even begin pulling things out to decide if it is \u201cclean or dirty\u201d, souvenir or transformative gift, or beneficial to apply now or goes on the top shelf out of view. My learning adventure of openness and leaning into zones outside my comfort is continuing even now as I sit in my South African bungalow in Sodwana Bay where I have been scuba diving. I keep asking Jason\u2019s question, \u201cGod what do you want me to see and know in each moment?\u201d<\/p>\n
Our journey of Global Perspectives has not prepared me for the experience of driving in a \u201cnew way\u201d.\u00a0 I have felt like I have been in a giant pinball machine working to avoid potchasms, livestock, live people, and speed mountains.\u00a0 I have experienced the anxiety of sensing that the residents here are not fond of my white presence.\u00a0 My scuba diving \u201cboat\u201d rides out to dive sights has been more like white water rafting on heroin.\u00a0 I am almost out of RAND and the thought of navigating the ATM without my co-travelers\u2019 providing cover has me avoiding the crowds. What does God want me to see and know? Global perspectives? Duh! Well, maybe my sense of lostness is speaking of global perspectives.<\/p>\n
All that to say, reading N.S. Lyons, The Upheaval <\/em>was way too much for me to wrap my brain around.\u00a0 And though Denise read Acceptance Address by Mr. Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn <\/em>while I was driving us through the South African mountains, much of Solzhenitsyn\u2019s words bounced off the car windows never really landing in my brain.\u00a0 The one thing that has stuck with me from both Lyons and Solzhenitsyn is that radical change is (has been) brewing.\u00a0 Cultural\/economic\/religious\/political arenas are up for grabs, and how humanity responds to the shifting ground will reveal our future. What does God want me to see? I answer this with an example from my diving today.\u00a0 The first dive today we found ourselves in a decent current.\u00a0 The fins I rented here just left me unbalanced because I had to kick vigorously to stay still enough to take pictures.\u00a0 The extra work meant I went through my air faster.\u00a0 Quickly I regretted not packing my own fins and dragging them halfway around the world so that I could handle what the ocean may offer.\u00a0 God revealed there are times the things I read are like trying to scuba against a current with weak fins and I run out of gas. Maybe when I return to these authors, I will have better equipment.<\/p>\n One other dynamic of these two articles that struck me was a lack of umbuntu character. They both seem to highlight a polarized views.\u00a0 The prevalence of the umbuntu theme from Cape Town is predominant in my thoughts. Layering umbuntu with the clarion call for mindfulness in the midst of change raises questions for me. How do we as Christians approach umbuntu change from a Trinitarian foundation? How do we embody this in our leadership? How do we remain self-differentiated and recognize we are because of the other in leading our communities through change?\u00a0 Can we remain cognizant that we are better together because better together makes us each distinct from the other?<\/p>\n In searching for a resource that can offer another voice to my map making, I have found Geopoliticafutures.com to offer a broad content in diverse formats. It covers varied regions across the globe.\u00a0 I have found Lex Friedman\u2019s podcast to offer a conciliant approach and adds to an umbuntu layering.\u00a0 However, I am ever cognizant of the voices of Tom and David Chivers, How to Read Numbers: A Guide to Statistics in the News<\/em> that I must use wisdom when processing information.\u00a0 It is easy to move into the comfort zone and interpret the cultural\/economic\/religious\/political arenas that fit my biases.<\/p>\n Oliver Wendell Homes Jr. said, \u201cA mind that is stretched by a new experience can never go back to its old dimensions.\u201d My American mind in South Africa has indeed been stretched.\u00a0 What does God want me to see and know?\u00a0 I must be curious like Zaccheus and climb up into a tree to get a new perspective of Jesus; to see what Jesus is doing. Climbing up into a South African tree as an American is challenging work. I hope I can contextualize my tree top experience for the ones whom I now share umbuntu.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Jason challenged us at the beginning of the Advance, to be open to the strange and stranger; to lean into that which is out of our control or comfort zone. I do not know about anyone else, but my mind is still grappling with the experience in Cape Town.\u00a0 So much to unpack, but I […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":148,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[2382,2381,1945],"class_list":["post-29014","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-globalperspectives","tag-umbuntu","tag-lost","cohort-lgp11"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29014","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/148"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=29014"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29014\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":29015,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29014\/revisions\/29015"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=29014"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=29014"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=29014"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}