Youth Development in Africa: Challenges and Opportunities
My presentation on 9 March 2015, at a joint teleconference between Institute of Youth Studies at Tangaza University College, Kenya and the Institute of Family Studies at the Catholic University of Lublin, Poland.
The purpose of the paper was to provoke some discussion among the students of both the institutions.
Preliminary Remarks
0.1. It could come as a surprise to some of my listeners that the speaker this afternoon is not an African. This is the advantage that scientific method offers us. A person from anywhere could scientifically look at a global or local phenomenon anywhere using the methodology of science. This said, having lived in two countries in the African continent for the past 23 years, and having travelled across the continent visiting at least 10 other countries, I […]
Reading Room
Reading Room
Do We Need Walls to Celebrate Development?
Do We Need Walls to Celebrate Development?
Sahaya G. Selvam, sdb
(2 July 2014)
It used to be said that the Great Wall of China is the only human artefact seen from the moon. Even if this legend has been debunked by astronauts, the wall is indeed great. It stretches an extensive distance of 7,200 kilometres. The Chinese have something to be proud of marking how developed they were even in the pre-Christian era.
These days I am on an academic writing break in Moshi, a cosy little down at the foothills of Kilimanjaro in Tanzania. I am not staying at the town though, which is crowded these days with the wazungu visitors, who pretend to be enthusiastic Kilimanjaro climbers. Some parade it in their T-shirts: “I climbed Mt. Kilimanjaro.” Of course, these T-shirts are not sold at the Kibo peak nor does it need any ID of sorts to buy […]
Multicultural Religious-Spirituality in Religious Life Today
Multicultural Religious-Spirituality in Religious Life Today
0.1.Change versus chaos = Integration: Interaction with other cultures and diverse worldviews – even in international religious communities – would often entail some change in my own worldview. Faced with change we fear chaos. True, too much change could bring about chaos. Fearing chaos in the face of change we might tend to fall back to rigidity. Some people tend to polarise these movements in terms of right and left, or as being conservative or progressive. The solution to this lies in integration. Virtue lies in the ‘integrated’ middle!
0.2. Truth-claims and meaning: When it comes to most truths that we hold dear – most of which are products of a certain brainwashing by the institutions of culture and religion in which we have been brought up – we need to be humble to accept that they are only ‘truth-claims’ and not the absolute truth! Therefore, in […]
A Tribute to Seamus Heaney (1939-2013)
Digging
BY SEAMUS HEANEY
Between my finger and my thumb
The squat pen rests; snug as a gun.
Under my window, a clean rasping sound
When the spade sinks into gravelly ground:
My father, digging. I look down
Till his straining rump among the flowerbeds
Bends low, comes up twenty years away
Stooping in rhythm through potato drills
Where he was digging.
The coarse boot nestled on the lug, the shaft
Against the inside knee was levered firmly.
He rooted out tall tops, buried the bright edge deep
To scatter new potatoes that we picked,
Loving their cool hardness in our hands.
By God, the old man could handle a spade.
Just like his old man.
My grandfather cut more turf in a day
Than any other man on Toner’s bog.
Once I carried him milk in a bottle
Corked sloppily with paper. He straightened up
To drink it, then fell to right away
Nicking and slicing neatly, heaving sods
Over his shoulder, going down and down
For the good turf. Digging.
The cold smell of potato […]
Homily for the feast of St Maria Dominica Mazzarello
“Every stitch an act of Love for God”
I am really nervous about this homily: an SDB with meagre knowledge of Mary Mazzarello (MM) preaching to a group of FMA! Hence the written text! I asked at least three sisters to do this homily, all refused; so here I am.
One way of escaping this predicament of my ignorance about MM is to say something very generic, as one SDB suggested. But thanks to Sr Virginia, FMA, who gave me a cart-load of books, I shall say something related to MM. So be prepared also for a lengthy homily – giving me time to show that I have tried to read the “cart-load of books”!
If I were to be preaching to a group of SDB, I could be an expert on MM if I were to say to them: MM was born […]