Catching Stories

If we are to replace  consumption as the central meaning of Christmas,  and of our lives, what should the new centre be? Dianne suggests that South Africa is in fact a good place to try and reach the heart of the Christmas mystery, because of the outsider status of the Holy Family. They were unwelcome migrants, travelling to Bethlehem on the bureaucratic whim of the Roman coloniser.

Ruark Swanepoel is an engineer who works in Fochville. That is part of his life. The other part is cultivating and combining art and artists. His art company is called 4Ever Odd – @4everodd on Instagram. The October feed on his Instagram is particularly rich, as three of the artists he works have been producing drawings for inktober – take a look to get an idea of what odd art is.

The light of the ordination makes the patterns that inevitably led there, very clear. Patricia served the Church and her people as a Dominican teaching sister for 44 years. In this time she studied Philosophy at Potch University. This opened the door to studying Theology in Rome. Here she experienced the first intimation of her calling, when a dying seminarian from South Africa asked her, and no-one else, to anoint him. In this second podcast, the preparation is completed, and her ordination takes place. At great cost to her position in the Church, and her whole way of living. This is the story of a pioneer, risking everything, journeying through uncharted territory, opening a path for those coming after her. Utterly content, through all the upheaval and change, that she has found her calling.

For Patricia, the easy route would have been to take a side step into a denomination which allows the ordination of women. But Patricia is Catholic in her DNA: this is the faith she knows, loves, believes in. It is the faith she grew up with and will die in. So she took the lonely road of Catholic ordination, which turned out to be a very hard road indeed.

To say that Tumelo is an IT consultant who writes books in her spare time would be to vastly underrate the time, passion and energy that Tumelo puts into her books. Perhaps she has cracked the secret of a day that is longer than 24 hours? Because listening to Tumelo, you would think that she wrote and marketed books, full-time. When you publish your own books, you do not have the luxury of relying on a publisher to do the marketing for you. So Tumelo works hard to make potential readers aware of her books, and to make sure readers have access to the books they want. Listening to Tumelo explain where she goes to discuss, and sell, her books, reminds you how vibrant the literature scene in Johannesburg is.