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To fly, we must lose the baggage: mortification and the spiritual life

 A while ago, my boys were watching a show on YouTube called Science Max . In the episode they were enjoying, they were making paper aeroplanes and then “maxing them out.” What caught my attention was that they used the design based on the paper aeroplane that holds the Guinness World Record for the longest flight. Watch clip here The man behind that record did not simply sit down one afternoon and happen to fold the perfect plane. He had always loved folding paper aeroplanes, but then spent about ten years studying the ancient Japanese art of origami. Through that discipline, he learnt techniques he could bring back into the world of paper folding, and eventually used them to build an aeroplane capable of enduring a remarkably long flight. What fascinated me is that even a paper aeroplane is not as simple as it looks. If it dips, the flaps need adjusting. If it leans, the balance is off. Even something so light requires precision, discipline and patience if it is going to fly wel...
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From the rising of the sun to its setting: we find the meaning of life

A few months ago we went away for the weekend to a little resort nestled in a ravine in Limpopo. It was the tail end of winter and so the chill of the early morning would bite, but this also meant watching the sun rise over the mountain, slowly pierce through the trees, stretching the first rays of the morning sun through the thick of the bush that had been in complete darkness through the night. Bela Bela, 07:17 - 26 July 2025 This made for prayer inspired by the treasure of nature, free of the distractions and hustle of city life. The sight of the sun sparked the words of the Mass in the common Eucharistic prayer, which quotes Psalm 113:3: "From the rising of the sun to its setting the name of the LORD is to be praised!" The sun rises and sets day after day without fail. As I sat there, I realised how small I was in the universe, a tiny insignificant dot at the tip of Africa in some random bush. However, at the same time, I felt so loved that in the immensity of the univers...
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WHAT DOES IT MEAN TO BE OPEN TO LIFE?

I received a gift of this plant from my friends, Alex and Thato probably about five years ago. It was originally two succulents in a small boot pot. Over the years it started producing new shoots so I transferred it to a bonsai training pot. I put this training pot next to my desk and one day I ate an apple took some of the seeds pushed it into the pot and honestly forgot about it. At the end of November, I saw three little shoots sprouting and realised the apple seeds had taken. Two of the sprouts were growing nicely until...   Apple seed sprouts, 9 December 2024 First, let me start by saying this blog will be very personal and intimate but this sprouting of seed is a testament to something the world has neglected in the past 60 years or so and this parable is very telling. If you search global fertility rates by country you find a marked decline from around the 1960s when the data was first collected to now. In the 1960s the average number of children per woman was around 5 ...
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TOB PART IV - THE NIGHTMARE OF CONCUPISCENCE: A JOURNEY TO REDEMPTION

Have you ever had a dream which created some panic? A while back I was having a consistent dream that I would return to school and in my dream I was never studying for the subjects or attending the class and it would make me worry that I would sit in the exam and know nothing. Now, this is a random dream and it has been years since I was in school but in the subconscious of dreamland I was going to sit in the exam, know nothing and then fail the exam. Now imagine for a moment you wake up and that dream becomes a reality. I think that is how Adam and Eve may have felt when they had committed the first or original sin.  Satan and the Beast of the Sea, by Jean Bondol and Nicholas Bataille "Then the eyes of both were opened, and they knew that they were naked: and they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves aprons... 'I was afraid, because I was naked; and I hid myself" (Gen 3:7,10) The devil's lie was an empty promise. The serpent said to the woman, "You will...
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TOB PART III - STUCK WITH NOWHERE TO GO

 It is 17:49 on the 4th of September 2024, and I have been stuck in an elevator at my office building for more than 30 minutes. I work on the 20th floor and when pressing the floor to travel down to the basement I got stuck. There is nowhere to go it's just the four walls around me, my computer bag and my guardian angel in the elevator with me. So in these moments, all becomes quiet and we become in touch with our inner selves, our souls. The mirrors in the elevator are positioned opposite each other so if you look into the one mirror you see multiple reflections that seem to run into infinity. If I were in a movie scene I could spice the scene up and start causing panic with highly unlikely scenarios like: What if the elevator cable starts fraying? What if I run out of oxygen? What if ... Fortunately it was pretty chilled and the technicians got me out after 50 minutes.  Stuck in the lift, 4 September 2024 (17:48) So after that dramatic introduction on contemplating death and...
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TOB PART II - THE SPOUSAL MEANING OF THE BODY

"What's wrong with the world, mama?  People livin' like they ain't got no mamas I think the whole world's addicted to the drama Only attracted to things that'll bring you trauma."  (Where is the love - Black Eyed Peas) Raphael (our third son), 13 April 2024 Deep down inside all of us, there is a desire to want to make the world a better place. We see suffering, brokenness and hardship around us and this can leave us begging the question why? Where is God in all of this?  In the second part of the series on ToB, we go deeper and this may help us realise that God has not left us nor does he desire we suffer. We discover that in fact, God has loved us completely by giving us freedom to choose.  In Genesis, we read about Adam. We should think of him more as a placeholder name representing humanity rather than an individual person. Why? The word Adam means human being and so God is telling us the story of all humanity. We label him, Old Adam. We know three thin...
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THE 7 HABITS OF HIGHLY EFFECTIVE APOSTLES

In high school, I attended a leadership conference that used the bestselling book 'The 7 Habits of Highly Effective Teenagers' written by Sean Covey the son of the author of 'The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People'. This book has some important Christian undertones but also some advice for us to borrow in the Christian life. This blog retrofits this to look at how we can apply them to our spiritual life.  The 7 Habits of Highly Effective Teens - Sean Covey As Christians, we are called to be apostles in the middle of the world just like the first apostles who were some ordinary fishermen and rough around the edges but after encountering Our Lord and receiving the Holy Spirit at Pentecost it all changed.  So here are seven habits we can try to develop to be more like the first apostles and carry out what our Lord asks of us: Habit 1 - Be Proactive  We are responsible for our own happiness in life. However, what makes us happy is not found externally beyond our souls but ...
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TOB PART I - WHO ARE WE?

We took our boys for their first glamping trip with their grandparents (my parents) to a resort in Limpopo called Klein Kariba. It had been about 18 years since I last visited the resort and a lot had changed. It is a little over an hour outside of the city of Pretoria and nestled in a beautiful valley.  Noah & Leo feeding Njala, 23 April 2024 One late afternoon as we prepared to make a fire a group of Njala (a lesser Kudu according to Google I won't pretend to know my antelope haha) came past to graze on nearby trees. Noah and Leo were able to feed them leaves and even stroke them. Raphael even got up close and giggled in baby talk as the female Njala was intrigued by a little baby. It is not common to get so close to wild antelope and the young herd may have recalled people feeding them leaves from the tree tops they couldn't reach when they were young. This exchange with creation can beg the question of, "Who are we?" and what makes us so different to the anima...
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WHERE DID CATHOLICISM COME FROM?

Any mass of water, such as a dam, lake or ocean, has a source that feeds it. If we see a large dam, we don't often think the source feeding it could be a narrow river stretching and winding for a long distance. In time, the small flow of the river feeds and fills the dam, but it always starts with the source upstream. The dam remains full as long as it is always connected to that life-giving source. Once the source is broken the dam will grow dry and eventually disappear.  In the world, there are about 2.6 billion Christians, with almost 1.4 billion Catholics. However, if we are all Christians, why do we distinguish between Catholics and other denominations? To understand why we distinguish, we have to look at all the bodies of Christianity and trace their rivers back to their source. Only then can we realise where the divisions arose and which remains connected to the original source? The Catholic Church remains unchanged from the very ground roots of Jesus. Catholicism is not som...
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IS PURGATORY EVEN REAL?

"No one wants to die. Even people who want to go to heaven don’t want to die to get there. And yet death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be, because Death is very likely the single best invention of Life. It is Life’s change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new. Right now the new is you, but someday not too long from now, you will gradually become the old and be cleared away. Sorry to be so dramatic, but it is quite true." (Steve Jobs) AfroBoer Coffee Shop, 16 November 2023 Death is a part of life. We are created in God's image and likeness, and so a spark of God exists in all of us, meaning our death is not the end of the road as it would be for a mosquito between the palms of our hands. We were created with a body and a soul. God is eternal, and so He has created us for eternity, giving us a soul. Death is the bridge between our life on earth and our eternal life. However, it is scary and daunting to ...
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WHY DO WE NEED TO PRAY?

In a world where we struggle to do a lot without access to the internet, we clearly notice when we are disconnected. Our WiFi router was down recently, which means you can't do much on your phone as the network connection in my area is poor. Working on my laptop without WiFi becomes challenging, given that so much work is stored in the "cloud", and the TV becomes useless without the internet.  Pretoria, 22 March 2023 I spent time trying to reset the router, turning it on and off, triple-checking the cables properly, and waiting on call centres listening to monotonous music with no one answering. Then I gave up and tried glancing occasionally to check if the internet light returned. Eventually, frustrated, I lost hope in trying and accepted it was not coming back. Then, 30 minutes later, to my surprise, I noticed the WiFi icon returned to my phone, and the internet was back! "Yay, the power is back", Noah and Leo shout when electricity returns after two-hour load...
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