April 5, Easter Monday

April 7, Easter Wednesday     No internet all these days. Frustrating. The mood to put something in the blog, I am afraid will soon pass is the internet doesn’t get connected soon. Happy delayed Easter.

 

April 11, 2021

Today is Divine Mercy Sunday—when Jesus came into the room without going through the door on the Sunday after Easter, the first thing he said is uxolo alube kini---peace be with you.  How could he be at peace with this bunch of cowards…..they all ran away when the police came to get Jesus and Peter, the leader of he gang even swore that he didn’t know the man, when the girl near the fire said, out loud, …you too are one of them. When he said,  peace be with you, what was implied is that he had forgiven them for abandoning him and for Peter even denying him, his best friends, he thought. So forgiveness was one of the topics today. You won’t ever be able to be at peace with yourself, if you still have ugly feelings for those who hurt you. It may take some time (I found that forgiveness is a process), even years, depending how badly one has been hurt, but inner peace won’t come until you resolve that ugly feeling. Enough preaching.

 

I had asked Fr. Tom Szura, our keeper of my J&P socio-pastoral account, to send $2000 to help the people here who have been pretty much wiped out by the lockdown that came with corona. Jobs lost (mostly too, very low paying jobs that people just managed to survive on), kicked out of where they were staying because they couldn’t pay the rent,  no money to buy food or pay for electricity, or water or even for some data to be able to use their cell phones. No money for transport, to the doctor, to the hospital, to the pharmacy, to the supermarket, etc. etc. etc. So that $2000 turned into about R30,000.00  I could help about 20 people with that. That was one thing that kept me busy.

  

Then I  helped Mpume with money to go to the hospital to get copies of all the interactions that she had with the doctors regarding the problem she was having with her eyes, having gone blind already in one eye and now the other slowly going blind too. She had to take someone with her to guide her so I had to pay for transport for 2, there and back. I had given her R1000 to be used for whatever expenses she might find and I thought that that should cover the transport and whatever else. Ha. She had 75 pages of reports that had to be copied. They wanted to charge her R24 per page. Holy moses. That’s R1800. She didn’t have that much so they let her go with whatever she had left after paying for the transport. That is all so that she can apply for disability grant so that she can survive. I don’t’ know how she is surviving now. I just try to help when I can.

 

I have decided to take some things like vitamin pills and other things to help my ageing body and also because we don’t always have a balanced diet. That has to come out of my pension money that is in the coffers of Mariannhill. It goes straight there so that I don’t even see it but I have an idea how much it is when I ask Tom Szura. What do I need at my age. No more night clubs, etc. Ha.

 

I give the occasional haircut. (my motto is, the only difference between a good haircut and a bad one is about 3 weeks.) I have been doing a good bit of reading and I scan the internet, when it works, for good articles that I can share with others. I send out, as I am sure that some of you know, reflections on the scripture readings for the coming Sunday . I think it goes to about 200 people. If you don’t get it and would like to get it send me your email address and I will put it on the list. And if you feel that you don’t really need it, let me know and I will take you off the list.

                                                                                                                                                                                     

Our Parish leader’s about 2  was broken into 3 times in about 2 weeks, once when we were at church. We had aluminum windows put in when some repairs were done to the house, and we discovered that they were very vulnerable for any clever thief who can put a thin blade up the inside of the window and push the handle up without having to break the glass, and with minimal damage to the window. We had to extend the ADT security coverage where the new window was put in and I had to ask my brother for $1000 to help pay for that. We thought that they would be able to sleep now but the third time they broke in it was though another of those aluminum windodws that we hadn’t thought of. Burglar bars are the only answer.

 

I was kept pretty busy preparing the Holy week services In English and Zulu. Lots of fun. Thursday, Mike Pillay, the leader, did the foot washing for me after I blessed the water since I am not supposed to kneel on my knee replacement (I think). And even if I could, I could surely get down, but I know that I wouldn’t be able to get up without a lot of help, and it would be a serious distraction. Friday, we had to adjust the service so that no one was going to kiss the foot of the cross as was the custom, so I just asked people to bow and say a short prayer to keep the protocol for the virus. (Of course, we all wear masks and use the sanitizer at the door (I think that sanitizer is going to become the new holy water….maybe I should bless it.) I knew about the two children but I was only told on Wednesday of Holy Week about the others. I like to prepare well (this was, again, in English and Zulu…..I need time to prepare) I never confirmed before because we were taught this was the Bishop’s job. However, I did remember that the Bishops’ Conference said that adult baptisms should include Eucharist (communion) and confirmation, as in the early days of the church. So many dioceses gave permission to priests to do that and it seems that Mariannhill was one of those dioceses. So I did it. The service is a long one (I won’t explain why here) and it lasted from shortly after 6 pm when we blessed the Easter fire and candle, and continued to bless the baptismal water and renew our baptism promises (when you see the ugly stuff that is happening in our world today….beheadings in our neighboring Mozambique, raping every time a traffic light changes, including even a 4 month old child, eeeeevil. Satan, personified evil is making this world a very dark place to live.) We finished with the baptisms and confirmations around 9pm. My spasm leg was killing me, paining like mad so that I really wanted leave and go home but I couldn’t abandon them in the middle of the service. I think my leg felt that it was being abused because it was standing for most of those almost 3 hours. I want to see the doctor if he or  do something to make the pain of the spasms be reduced or something.

 

 I forgot about Palm Sunday, which included the procession, but I stayed in church because I wouldn’t be able to keep up with them and would just slow them down.

 

I still go to the hospital for a very informal kind of prayer service and a blessing on Tuesday morning at 6:30am (changed from 6am to get more people) and Friday at noon. Even if no one comes I figure that this is my contribution to the heailng team at the hospital ….to pray that God protects them from the man virus , and their families and the patients. I even came to a non virus ward to anoint a sick patient and took the opportunity to remind the patients in that ward that there was no discrimination, I pray for everyone, not just catholics.

(Hey it is time for me to brush my teeth,, put in my eyedrops (glaucoma) and hit the sack.) see you tomorrow, I hope.)

 

April, 12, 2021

 

“Beijing won the right to host the 2022 Olympics in 2015, the same year it cracked down on lawyers and activists across China,” Chinese human rights lawyer Teng Biao wrote earlier this year. “Since then, it has detained journalists; harassed and attacked activists and dissidents even outside China’s borders; shut down nongovernmental organizations; demolished Christian churches, Tibetan temples and Muslim mosques; persecuted, sometimes to death, believers in Falun Gong; and sharply increased its control of media, the Internet, universities and publishers.”

Should we boycott their presence at the Olympics this year because or their disrespect for human rights?  This just came in this morning.

 

A big event… I took Retired bishop Lobinger, 92 yrs. old, to buy a pair of suspenders (braces in UK English). I found the store that sold a whole variety of them on the internet. When we got there, they said they only sell them on line. Bad luck. We went to several other stores with no luck. Finally a young man from one of the stores we had approached told us that there was a little store just around that corner that had them. We went and, sure enough, there she had a variety The store was about 15 feet by 15 feet but they had all kinds of things. So he now happily sports his suspenders.

I also became his doctor’s assistant. I saw a blood stain on the back of his sweater and thought that there must be something that he can’t see that is bleeding there. So I persuaded him to take off his shirt and sure enough there was a deep sore, like a bed sore, but about a half inch across and about of a quarter of an inch deep thee. How it got there is anyone’s guess but I suspect that when he once fell down, he banged his back against his backbone and that got it started. The doctor checks it out every week and I change the bandaid every morning with  a bit of anti something on it to speed up the healing. I am now an unofficially qualified doctor’s assistant.

Time to put this in the blog now. See you all. Easter means hope. When it seemed impossible, God came on the scene and look. Ha. Surprise surprise. They thought it was the end of the story but it was really just the end of an episode, and the story continues.

Take care. LOTs of love and his peace.    Cas.