deep thinking

So i am sitting right next to my husband. I am blogging and he is doing a systematic theology paper. I have already taken three theology courses in my time at Bible College and have one more to take. I must say this before i continue to write, i am not a theologian. In fact i really struggled in those classes, it was hard for me to grasp all the theories and theologies of those that have come before me. The tests were always very painful for me, i never ever did well. That is partly my dyslexia and partly, i just didn't get it. Don't misunderstand me, i think theology is very important, especially correct theology. However, there are many things i cannot remember and could not tell you which theology is which. So it has got me thinking, what in the world are Adam and i doing to ourselves. We are both doing internships right now in a small church in Colorado and all these theologies don't really seem to have a place in our ministry right now. When you try to discuss them with the average lay person you end up sounding like a smart aleck. So where is their place? I guess personally they have helped me see God in a better light, to understand this great God just a little bit better. I will never grasp them all and will probably not use them in everyday jargon but if they have brought me even one step closer to my God, then how amazing. So my attitude has changed from one of dissatisfaction to one of understanding. I may not understand all the theologies that are out there, but i have a deeper understanding of God. For that i am thankful.

Dzimba dza mabwe: The House of Stone

I can sing my national anthem in three languages. The government changed the national anthem when I was eight. They wanted a new anthem that truly reflected the nation—they claimed the original one was not indigenous enough—so they changed it. One line always bothered me in the new anthem, “Mwari ropafadzai nyika yeZimbabwe” which means blessed be the land of Zimbabwe. The country would sing this national Anthem with pride and gusto not knowing the changes that would come with it.

“Oh lift high the banner, the flag of Zimbabwe. The symbol of freedom proclaiming victory, we praise our heroes' sacrifice...

I have always been proud of my country. Zimbabweans are a very prideful people. They have nothing left to hold onto so they hold onto their pride. I was one of those. I have always been proudly Zimbabwean. I have wanted to fly the flag of my country everywhere I went and let the world know that I was Zimbabwean. I have often wondered why I wanted to fly the flag of a broken land. Why I have wanted to hold onto a crumbling nation with all that I can; why I have wanted everyone to know I am Zimbabwean when the land that I call “Zim” no longer exists? We have a flag. Its colours are black, red, yellow and green. I would not say that this flag could be flown showing victory, or heroics. It is more a symbol of a country disintegrating, and in devastation.

There are these ruins in Zim called the “Great Zimbabwe Ruins.” The history of Zimbabwe is so corrupt that no one really knows the true history of these ruins. I will always remember what they look like. They are these great, giant walls of grey brick, with one main grand wall surrounding the possible “village” that was once there. However, these grey bricks are crumbling—as most ancient buildings do—the country Zimbabwe derived its name from these ruins, Dzimba dza Mambwe, “the House of Stone.” I have wondered, looking back on those ruins, if the name Zimbabwe itself is a prediction of what was to come for the nation: the house of stone that will crumble. Yet most Zimbabweans will still hold their flags high, and cling to what is left of the degenerating land, if there is anything left.

My family once went to visit these ruins; I think I was thirteen, the age where you think you know everything. I was very disappointed in the history of the ruins. The tour guides claimed that these ruins were Shona ruins (the Shona are one of the main African peoples in Zimbabwe). However, I knew that the historical evidence of these ruins was not clear. They are so old it’s most likely that they are true African ruins, but the structure and style of the ruins are unlike anything else African. Basically my thirteen-year-old mind was convinced the history of the ruins was warped. I believed the government has changed the history –they have changed history books before—and made it sound like their ancestors had built the ruins. I knew I was right—there is no evidence that I was right—and there was no doubt about it. Needless-to-say my family was very sick of me after that trip. Every wall, every broken down brick, every crumbling mud hut, I would say, “Don’t tell anyone, but its all lies.” I felt I lived in a world of conspiracy, and I did to some extent.

…And vow to keep our land from foes;

And may the Almighty protect and bless our land.

When a one nation or piece of land is taken over by another, the flag is often the symbol used to claim that land. In the year 2000, war veterans staked their claim and took the land they thought belonged to them. A war veteran in Zim was someone who had supposedly fought in the liberation war from 1964 to 1979—they should have been at least 45 years old—most of the claimed “war vets” were 19-25 (so it was a lie, they were just normal people taking over land). President Robert Gabriel Mugabe wanted to redistribute all commercially owned, white farmland and give it to the war vets (basically he took most farms owned by white people and gave them to back people, with no compensation to the previous farm owners). There was much violence (if the people refused to leave there farms they would be tortured until they left, or died), and when the seizing of land stopped, a total of 110,000 square kilometres had been taken; the country only had 112,000 square kilometres in commercial land. Most of the white farmers left the country. This began a mass exodus of whites in Zimbabwe; even non-farmers were migrating to other nations around the world. The crumbling had begun; the land that once was the breadbasket of Africa was dying fast. The fields that once produced wheat, barley and maize now sat desolate, dry and damaged.

How could the Almighty protect this land that man was certain to destroy? I have often asked the question, why is there suffering, especially in African nations? One of the small insights I have had from this journey is that when man sins there are huge consequences. Sin was brought into this world through the fall and ever since then man has been power-hungry. We see these consequences sometimes in small ways, but I have seen them destroy a whole country. One man, Mugabe, managed to single-handedly destroy a growing nation. He chose power and it affected and entire nation.

…Oh lovely Zimbabwe, so wondrously adorned

With mountains, and rivers cascading, flowing free;

May rain abound, and fertile fields;

I spent many hours of my life enjoying the beauty of Zimbabwe. I enjoyed the natural wild-life, riding horses to see some of the great African animals. On the horse I felt part of the animal, like I was part of nature; the horse would take me as close as two metres away from giraffe, wildebeest, impala, and more. The dry high-grassland was a beauty in itself. However, there were times Zim was bursting with green, especially in December the warm-rainy month. My grandparents lived in the Eastern-Highlands, otherwise known as Inyanga. Those were the mountains of Zim; it wouldn’t snow but it would still get pretty chilly. My brother, sisters and I would spend hours running around the botanical gardens, building forts out of pine-needles, and swimming in the icy-cold streams of the Tsanga River. Childhood was blissful adventures of nature and all that she had to offer.

It had been about ten years since I had been to this particular campsite we spent many family vacations at, Vumba National Park—now Bvumba—known for its misty mornings and botanical paradise. When I was little my family would set up camp there for 6 weeks, it was our temporary home. I remember one distinct holiday when we had terrible storms for days. We had set our tent up—this tent was huge with two separate “bedrooms” on both ends and a middle “lounge/dining room” area—on a hill. After two straight days of freezing rain, our tent flooded. We had a foot of water on the floor of the tent. Us kids thought it was such an adventure—our own personal swimming pool—Mom and Dad didn’t quite agree. I remember after the rains stopped other campers were hanging out their carpets, and airing out blankets and sheets. We were shocked to see carpets, but when Zimbabweans camp, they camp for months at a time. It really was a short-term home.

When I returned to this temporary home, as a teen, it was nothing like I remembered. The campsite was over-grown with weeds, and patches of dead earth. Most of the trees had been ripped out of the ground, leaving gapping wholes and mounds of dirt. The pool that we spent days in as kids was empty, cracked, and useless; the little rivers that once had all kinds of colorful fish in them, dried up. It wasn’t returned to its natural state as they had wanted it to, but it rather look like a tornado had been through it. No one cared about these campsites anymore, they weren’t taken care of. The trees were taken out because most of them were pine trees. Pine trees are not indigenous to Zim they are exotic. Therefore, the government wanted all the trees to be indigenous again, so they ripped out all the pine trees with the intention of growing trees that originally came from Zimbabwe. I never saw new growth, only the demolition and devastation. Even the natural, beautiful, Zimbabwe was falling to pieces.

…May we be fed, our labour blessed;

I was in grade three when a program demanding that all children must eat porridge at break time, was implemented. So when 10 a.m. would roll round, all the children would line up and file into a large dining area. I hated it, but I am not a porridge fan. It lasted about two months. It was mielie-meal porridge made out of maize. It was, I am sure, aided by foreign aid, a way to easily feed starving children in Africa. As I said, it didn’t last long, either the money ran out, or the government decided to keep some for themselves, a very normal practice. They must have been hungry.

The land that once produced food for its people and for exportation produced nothing of its own. All food had to be imported from neighbouring countries. This meant that if there was food on the grocery store shelves it was expensive. The average rural family could not afford this food. Therefore whatever they farmed in their backyard would be what they ate. Most of the indigenous people had no knowledge of farming, and so the land went untilled. The war vets were in the same situation, farming just enough to feed their families. The land was slowly returning to its original state. Where the land was no longer commercial, it was simply used for personal use. Therefore large amounts of crops weren’t being produced anymore and it was slowly starving the country.

The biggest fight I remember my parents having was over bread. My mom had been at the grocery store for three hours waiting for the bread to come out. The usual procedure would be that the women (and sometimes men) would wait in a line for hours. Then whatever bread was made for that day would be put out and it was first come first serve. My mom came home that day with probably twenty-five loaves of bread. My dad told her she had to take them back. They were all terribly stale. She didn’t want to, she had waited for hours, and she didn’t know if she could get more. It was a silly little experience, but it’s etched in my mind, the fight for bread.

…And may the Almighty protect and bless our land.

Oh God, we beseech Thee to bless our native land;

The land of our fathers bestowed upon us all;

The land of our fathers: who are the fathers? That is the true question. If you are white, then your idea of “fathers” is most likely from Britain. If you are black your fathers have been in Zimbabwe possibly since the beginning of time.

I was eleven when this was made very clear to me. I was in grade six and my teacher, Mr. Nyangombe, was teaching our class the history of colonisation in Zimbabwe. “It’s your fault! It’s YOUR fault!” he said, pointing. I was one of two white girls in my class. Somehow the fact that the white people took over Zimbabwe made it my fault. Instead of looking back and saying both sides made wrong decisions, it became evident that my teacher blamed the whites, and therefore blamed me. I remember being so angry with him. I knew it wasn’t even slightly my fault, and my ancestors were Scottish anyway; the English took over Zim. I didn’t say anything to him; words just didn’t come. What could I say to this man, years older than me, with a warped view of race? This same teacher had beaten a boy with a belt once in front of the entire class so I was too afraid to speak up. So I never did. My parents knew about it and the school board was informed, but nothing ever happened to Mr. Nyangombe. I remember I just had to let it go; we lived in a world where things like that happened everyday. No one was in danger because of it; I just had to deal with it. Injustice was what it was, but that was what our country was full of.

White people were no longer friends, but enemies of long ago. My fathers had not bestowed land, they had apparently stolen it and now the other fathers—the black ones—wanted their land back. So maybe God would bless the native land, the land that used to be, not the land that the whites polluted. Would he bless that land? I knew that God couldn’t bless that land; not one full of hate and animosity. If the nationals were asking God to bless their native land, it seemed He was. God was giving them what they wanted, a nation returned to mostly a black nation, a nation that was full of racists, a nation that had nothing to offer the world at large. If that was what it meant to bless the native land, then it was blessed in abundance.

…From Zambezi to Limpopo

May leaders be exemplary;

I could never sing this line. “May the leaders be exemplary….” The leaders were not exemplary. Robert Mugabe has been ranked the seventh worst dictator in 2007, and then went up to first place in 2009. In 1980 the average annual income for Zimbabwe was US $950, and a Zimbabwean Dollar was worth more than the American by one. Inflation then hit beginning at 623% in 2004 and eventually reaching 14,840.5% in 2007. It continued into hyperinflation and went to 10,500,000% in June 2008 it kept rising until the currency collapsed. Now the country works mainly in U.S. dollars.

Mugabe has been called Hitler before, and even grew the little toothbrush mustache known as the Hitler mustache. This was Mugabe’s response to this accusation, “This Hitler has only one objective: justice for his people, sovereignty for his people, recognition of the independence of his people and their rights over their resources. If that is Hitler, then let me be a Hitler tenfold". Oh, Mugabe never massacred millions of Jews, but he has massacred hundreds of Ndebele people (the other African people group in Zim, a minority to the Shona). However, no one knows about that, or can prove it. He’s a very smart man. Wonderful at covering his tracks, and making himself look good. For example, when he first started taking over the farms, he offered a million Zimbabwean dollars for each farm. To the rest of the world this sounded fair. What the world didn’t know was that a million Zimbabwean dollars was, at the time, equivalent to possibly twenty U.S dollars. Who would sell their huge commercial farm for twenty dollars? He was (and still is) a man who makes Zimbabwe’s problems sound minor and nothing compared to the rest of the world.

We would often drive past Mugabe’s house in the capital Harare. You could only drive past there from 6 a.m. to 6 p.m., or the guards that lined the outside walls would shoot at you. The car could not slow down drastically or definitely not stop, or you would be shot. They would, of course, aim for your tires, but if they missed, oh well. It was one of the first times I felt hate. I would stare out the window and stare down the armed guards placed all around the walls. I thought if they could at least see the anger in my eyes, the pain, the hurt, the torment, then maybe they would care. They never flinched, or even blinked. I mattered not to them. I wondered what would happen to me if I grabbed one of their guns and shot the president. He actually was never home, unbeknownst to me. He has other secret homes he lived in. I wish someone would just pop him off; then maybe it would all be over. He wasn’t the only corrupt one; it wouldn’t all be over. The man was Prime Minister in 1980. Then in 1987 he changed the constitution and made himself President. He has been changing the constitution ever since to remain in power.

Sanctions, war-veterans, land-redistribution, operation Murambatsiva, Xenophobia, Alien, Refugee, immigrant—all words I never thought would be a part of my everyday vocabulary. On my passport it says; “The government of Zimbabwe requests and requires all those whom it may concern to allow the bearer to pass freely without let or hindrance and to afford the bearer such assistance and protection as may be necessary.” I have never been able to pass freely into any land, not into foreign lands and even traveling back to Zimbabwe has never been easy. The passport I own might as well be the tree it came from it does nothing. Just as my passport is a vapour, the country is the same. It was one a house made of stone and is now a mound of rubble. The land I called home is hardly recognisable and the pieces will never be able to be put back.

And may the Almighty protect and bless our land.”

We as a country end our anthem with this line. We have repeated it over and over throughout the national hymn. Man often does this, he does whatever he wants, and then asks God to bless it. Black and white Zimbabweans long for their land back, they long for it to be restored, to be blessed. This verse has often come to my mind when pondering Zimbabwe, “If my people, who are called by name, with humble themselves and pray, and turn from their wicked ways. THEN I will hear from heaven, I will hear and HEAL their land,” Chronicles 7:14. The wicked government is still in power and the country is not turning to the Lord for healing, so can he really heal it? I doubt it. The land will be restored when it can turn to the Lord, it can only be healed when the wicked ways are turned from. Until then my crumbling nation will continue to crumble.

heavy heart.

My heart has been heavy lately. So heavy the normal things of life have been painful, breathing, sleeping, eating. I have done a great job of distracting my brain, with cooking (i just can't eat what i cook), cleaning, art, and t.v. My brain loves me for this constant exercise. I keep it occupied and it thanks me by not thinking about what weighs on my heart. I have become so good at this distraction tactic that i look back on my days and wonder where they went. I am distracting myself out of living. On the outside i look fine, and perhaps even feel fine inside. But my heart tells me otherwise.

I have done everything i can to please this brain that wants to punish me with it's thoughts. But in doing so i have neglected my little heart. I have realised that i actually don't know how to distract my heart, in fact it's impossible. So i ignore it. This doesn't work. I cannot make my heart be peaceful.

There is a reason for this. In my human capacity i can distract the brain, confuse it even, make it think it's happy. But my heart, well it's God's and only He can heal it. Somehow i forgot He could. I have not just ignored my heart but ignored the one who holds it in His hand.

I have never struggled so much with grasping His peace. Sometimes it takes me a day or two. This time I have to wake up each day, and remind myself minute by minute that I have His peace. A peace that passes all understanding.

This takes work, I can not trick my heart into thinking it's happy. Even if I have to do it minute by minute i will continue to grasp His peace. Why? Because it is the only thing that can distract me, that can fulfill my soul, that can make me content.

I think the human body is ingenious. It knows how to cope when the heart does not. I will keep doing the things i enjoy, but not to distract me, but rather just to enjoy them. His peace is what sustains.