Brett Fish, Author at 1Africa

How far would you go to win?

-

February 4, 2016

Not too many people may be aware that the U19 Cricket World Cup is happening at the moment. South Africa had quite a dismal showing but managed to gain a little pride with a complete ten wicket route of Scotland in their last game. But it was the final over of the crucial clash between West Indies and Zimbabwe that suddenly brought world attention to this tournament.

I remember back in the ’93/’93 season when Peter Kirsten was the last person in international cricket to be on the receiving end of a Mankad by a furious Kapil Dev of India. That was the last time this happened, so you can tell how rare it is.

WHAT EXACTLY IS A MANKAD?

Technically it counts as a run-out and it happens when the batsman who is not facing is so much out of his crease that the bowler is able to knock the bails off the stumps as he runs up to them.

It was named in 1947/1948 after a bowler named Vinoo Mankad ran out Australian batsman Bill Brown in this fashion in a Sydney test, and the name stuck after much controversy.

The controversy comes from the fact that it is not viewed by most as a particularly sportsmanlike move. (The question is whether the critics have the same kind of strong feelings towards batsmen who don’t walk when they know they have hit the ball, and the answer is usually no – so hypocrisy much?)

This was particularly painful for the Zimbabwean U19 team as they needed just three runs off the final over with their last pair of batsmen at the crease and so the likelihood is that they would have won the game and progressed to the semi-finals.

HOW WAS IT VIEWED

Of course, Twitter exploded after the incident where West Indian bowler Keemo Paul ran out Richard Ngavara in this fashion. It was interesting to see a number of international cricketers weighing in:

Former New Zealand captain Stephen Fleming weighed in:

Right or wrong, just a sad way to end a good game especially with so much on the line #winatallcosts????

— Stephen Fleming (@SPFleming7) February 2, 2016

As did current England ODI captain, Eoin Morgan who was clearly not impressed:

Disgraceful behaviour in the U19CWC. WI’s should be embarrassed!!

— Eoin Morgan (@Eoin16) February 2, 2016

Our very own Alviro Petersen weighed in:

I cant support what just happened in the #U19CWC @ICC perhaps a decision taken without thought… #sportsmanship

— Alviro Petersen (@AlviroPetersen) February 2, 2016

There were some voices in agreement with the decision though:

Why bring in a law that allows it and then say it’s not in the spirit. Isn’t it poor sportsmanship that he’s stealing a run? #WIvZIM

— Stuart Meaker (@SMeaker18) February 2, 2016

R Ashwin gave a bowler’s perspective:

@lk_karthik @ImAishu_ @SriniMama16 every single day,I can’t push the front line,why should a batsmen gain yards.

— Ashwin Ravichandran (@ashwinravi99) February 2, 2016

And Harsha Bhogle questioned the hypocrisy:

Amazed that the spirit of the game never comes up when batsmen hit the ball and stay on but does when a bowler mankads a batsman….

— Harsha Bhogle (@bhogleharsha) February 2, 2016

HOW ABOUT YOU?

I have always been a fan of batsmen walking when they are given out and Adam Gilchrist, Jonty Rhodes and Hashim Amla all have huge respect from me for being known to do that. So the question really boils down to one between technicality and the spirit of the game.

If you’re talking “spirit of the game,” perhaps you have to take Meaker’s point into account: Is it in the spirit of the game for the batsman to be stealing ground?

This is a tough one and I imagine probably a little bit clearer if you are on the West Indies team, who move forwards to the semi-finals, and also for the distraught Zimbabweans who are heading back home because of it.

What about you, though? If you were the bowler in that position, would you have gone for it?

Choose love

Brett Fish

-

February 1, 2016

0

All you need is love!

And Valentine’s Day is just around the corner…

Which means a complete extreme of emotions for different people: To some it is exhilarating and exciting, while others are already hiding in their makeshift lounge cushion forts and waiting till it goes away.

What does the idea of Valentine’s Day mean to you?

The first word we all think of is love, right? But how we think of that may differ. Valentine’s Day sells us the concept of Love as a feeling – an emotion that can be attracted with cute cards, cuddly toys, fragrant flowers and expensive meals.

WHAT DOES SCIENCE SAY?

I want to suggest to you that love is so much more than that. And at a time on the calendar when the scientific equation being flaunted to you is love = money spent + heart palpitation increase (or something like that!), how about we take a few minutes to look at love in a very different way.

I also want to look bigger than relationship love here – I want to talk about friendship; about the people you are classmates or colleagues with; about family and even about the people who serve you in the supermarket or who stand at the traffic lights asking for money.

LOVE IS A CHOICE

That phrase really does seem to threaten to remove all of the romance from it – as it should. But when you put love under the microscope and zoom in to its closest particles, that is what you will discover. Love is a choice.

More than just feeling the doof-dooof-doof of heartbeats when that special person is in the room and so being ready to do absolutely anything for them, true love is when there is no doof-doof-doof and you choose to act anyways.

Here is a list of ten creative and profound ways we can choose to love the people around us:

1. Listen without interrupting
2. Speak without accusing
3. Give without sparing
4. Answer without arguing
5. Share without pretending
6. Enjoy without complaint
7. Trust without wavering
8. Forgive without punishing
9. Promise without forgetting
10. Pray without ceasing

I found this list on the internet a long time ago and it caught my attention because it was so different to the usual ideas of what love is.

Yet when I looked closer I could easily see just how deeply each of those actions to be chosen and expressed could and would affect the people around me.

We could take time to unpack each of those, but rather look down the list and choose the one that you think needs the most work in your life and choose this week to focus on it. Maybe write it out and stick it on your mirror and choose one person specifically to test it out on. If you’re brave, maybe you’ll take one of these per week and live out ten weeks of chosen and expressed love. I imagine the effect on you and the people around you will be incredible.

How about you? Which is the one you would like someone in your life to be working on when it comes to you? Let us know in the comment section.

The “Yes, let’s” of the improv scene

Brett Fish

-

January 28, 2016

0

I used to describe improv shows as “the most fun you can have with your clothes on that doesn’t involve chocolate”. 15 years later, which is how long I have been involved with Improguise, that remains true.

This Cape Town team of improv actors, responsible for playing TheatreSports shows for years, is Cape Town’s longest running show and arguably its best kept secret. Now they perform a variety of weekly shows ranging from a full length soapie to a musical to a TheatreSports show to a ‘Superscene’ (which is like Survivor: Improv where directors direct short scenes that the audience vote out until one remains as the Superscene) and much much more.

It began in a similar vein to the British and American Whose Line Is It Anyway? television shows that focused on short three minute games where everything was completely improvised on the spot.

Suggestions from the audience on style, accent, emotion, and location helped to prove that what you were watching was completely unrehearsed (although often it is still so impressive you only half believe that).

It really has been a long, surprising, crazy, roller-coaster of fun.

THE “YES, LET’S”

It’s not only about fun though: being part of this particular improv team (one of a growing number around the country and of course, the world) has taught me some crucial life lessons that I want to share today.

Rule number one when we started playing shows was that you always had to say “yes!” to an offer that was given you.

Example:

Player one runs on to stage and says to player two: Let’s go to the beach.

Player two responds with: No, I don’t like the beach, it is boring.

The End. A “no!” definitively declares the story over and both players have to now work so much harder to get a new story going.

Even if player two thought that the beach was the most boring location in the world to go to, imagine if she had responded with: “That is an amazing idea, I heard they are judging the finalists of the sandcastle-building competition.” Or: “Yes, let’s. I heard that an old submarine washed up there during the night.” Suddenly, a story is born and the rest of the scene will follow the actors as they explore and further this story.

TWO IMPORTANT LIFE LESSONS

The “Yes, let’s” is a technique that gives the loudest resounding “yes!” possible to a story that is introduced and says, “I am going to join you on this thing and we are going to make it great.”

The “Yes, and…” is a technique that takes an existing idea (the beach) and adds another element (the sandcastles or submarine) that makes it even more exciting and gives it more specific places to travel.

My own country, South Africa, really feels like it could use more “Yes, let’s” and “Yes, and…” don’t you think? Barraged by a series of “Must falls” almost every time we open our eyes, there has been a growing number of people and organisations that are changing their tune to a “Must rise”.

We can see that in the latest issue of The Big Issue magazine, which employs hundreds of vendors throughout the country to sell a magazine that really benefits them. The latest issue is the photography one titled Hope.

We observe it in the pictures of the Phoenix made out of the colours of the South African flag with the Hashtag #SouthAfricansMustRise that are flying around on social media platforms.

WHICH WILL YOU FEED?

I love this story of an old Cherokee legend:

An old Cherokee is teaching his grandson about life. “A fight is going on inside me,” he said to the boy.

“It is a terrible fight and it is between two wolves. One is evil – he is anger, envy, sorrow, regret, greed, arrogance, self-pity, guilt, resentment, inferiority, lies, false pride, superiority, and ego.” He continued, “The other is good – he is joy, peace, love, hope, serenity, humility, kindness, benevolence, empathy, generosity, truth, compassion, and faith. The same fight is going on inside you – and inside every other person, too.”

The grandson thought about it for a minute and then asked his grandfather, “Which wolf will win?”

The old Cherokee simply replied, “The one you feed.”

As we are all hoping to be part of a better country, no matter where in the world we live, the question comes to us about which wolf we are choosing to feed: Is it the wolf of “Must fall” or it is the improv-inspired more-creative-and-perhaps-more-challenging wolves of “Must rise” and “Yes, let’s” and “Yes, and…’?

Which one are you going to feed?

If you want to make the world a better place…

Lifestyle

Brett Fish

-

January 25, 2016

0

If you want to make the world a better place…

…take a look at yourself and make a change. (Michael Jackson, ‘Man in the Mirror)

The western world can be a confusing place to grow up in. We are fed a daily message of “This is all about you” which affects every aspect of our lives, from career to money to relationships to where and how we choose to live.

As we find opportunities to stop and look around and really reflect on what is happening all around us, both on a local and global scale, it is a relatively quick jump to realising that we have been lied to.

Polar ice caps melting; the effects of pollution on the environment; another animal on the verge of extinction; and all it takes is a drive to the airport in Cape Town where I live to quickly be reminded that not everyone lives the same (the growing townships at the side of the highway screaming at me: “You have it better!”)

KISS OVERWHELMEDNESS GOODBYE

It is easy to feel like any difference you might be able to make is insignificant. So why do anything at all? Well, if everyone continues to feel like that, then sure, not much is going to change. Which is why it has to start with someone – and perhaps that someone is you.

My wife and I started wrestling with some of these issues about five years ago. Not thinking that we could change the overall situation in any major way, we decided that if we could make small changes in our lives, and then invite our friends and family to do the same, that slowly, things on a global scale could be affected.

MEAT-FREE MONDAYS

A number of years ago we tried to take part in meat-free Mondays, which meant that one day a week we chose not to eat meat as a way of reducing our meat intake and being mindful of how much we consume. Last year we decided to step it up a notch and moved to every second week being meat-free. What that effectively did was cut our meat consumption in half. It did mean a little bit more planning and intentionality, but six months later it has become a part of who we are and how we live life.

We lived in the States for three years where recycling was the norm, and so when we returned to South Africa, we knew that we had to continue. Here it is not as commonplace and in Cape Town we have to bag our recycling and drop it off once a week at a place that sorts it and deals with it – so again a little more effort and intentionality, but in another small way we are once again making a growing-in-significance difference. Friends of ours use companies like Kool Waste and Oasis to deal with their recycling. Now to get others to do the same.

AT LEAST DO SOMETHING

One of the problems we face at the moment as we try to be more green and look after our world for the generations that will follow, is that it can feel a bit like a privileged thing to be able to do. Choosing to use ‘green’ cleaning products and to buy free range or ethically sourced goods tends to be more expensive at the moment. So maybe you can’t do all of the things you would like to do all at once.

But at least start by doing something. Recycling feels like an easy one. You could choose a few food products you use regularly (like eggs and meat, perhaps) and start to buy free range or switch one or two cleaning products to more “green” varieties. Then, be on the lookout for when you can institute the next change.

Start conversations with your friends. The more people who start using these products, the cheaper and more accessible they will eventually be, and the difference made to the world will be bigger.

WHAT ARE YOU DOING TO MAKE A DIFFERENCE?

We would love to hear from you. What differences are you already making that will help ensure that the planet is more likely to last longer for those who will follow? Or what change are you willing to take on for this next year? Please leave your stories in the comments section below. This is something that, together, we can make huge changes in. The world needs you!

Keeping the ‘er’… in Twitter

Brett Fish

-

January 20, 2016

0

On Tuesday Twitter (or The Twitterer as I call it) went down… and the world ended.

Or so it seemed for many.

It just seemed like a whole lot of people standing around awkwardly going, “Er… what now? Like, what do we do? Like, do I have to talk to people or (gasp!) go outside?”

Especially my mate Dave, who was so devastated that he took to Facebook:

Twitter, I know I said that things have changed but please – I didn’t want you to leave! Please! Come back! We can work this out! It’s not us, it’s THEM. I will mute the trolls, ignore the racists and credit the REAL comedians. I will RT rather than fav, and will engage, engage, engage! I can’t live…if living is without you!

(I don’t think Dave was really that devastated, but he expressed what it seemed so many were actually feeling.)

MEANWHILE…

In the other corner, people were making the most of the social media chaos.

Someone pointed out that the irony of the #TwitterDown hashtag that started doing the rounds once Twitter was back up again, was that it was a meaningless tag while Twitter was down because you couldn’t use it – and then an equally useless tag once it was restored, because it wasn’t true any more.

One of the tweets I saw when my account went live again was someone who had joke-tweeted: “Guys, MySpace is still down, I don’t know what to do.” Which for those in the know is a hilarious dig in the face of the original Facebook before Facebook was a thing that died a lonely and sad death, except in the lives of people trying (repeatedly) to shut down their MySpace accounts. Which may just be impossible.

HOW DO WE SURVIVE WITHOUT SOCIAL MEDIA?

Social media in an of itself is not a bad thing. As with most things in life it largely depends on how you use it – or in many cases how it uses you.

And an opportunity like a social media platform crashing for a few hours can be a great self-reflective help in determining just how addicted we are to it or not.

Many people I know have done a day or week, and in some cases even a month or longer of jumping off of social media as a kind of technology detox. I have never heard one person who has done that say that they missed it (possibly because the true addicts would never be able to possibly try such a dramatic thing?).

But the point is that we can get used to it and, if not properly managed, we can find an unhealthy tie starting to form.

FINDING A HEALTHY BALANCE

For me it’s about being intentional. If you know why you engage with social media platforms beforehand, you are more likely to use them to good effect.

It can be the same with television – if you just plop yourself down in front of it with no aim in mind, you can often end up wasting hours clicking between channels and not really watching anything.

And it’s not like there is a set purpose – some people use it to connect, while for others it might be to gather people around a cause like #BlackLivesMatter or to discover helpful articles or follow current trends.

So take a few minutes to think about your relationship with the various social media platforms and ask if any of them feel unhealthy in the way you relate to them at the moment.

TAKE ACTION BEFORE IT GETS OUT OF HAND

If Twitter going down for a couple of hours caused you anxiety, I encourage you to use the moment to do a bit of a stock take.

If you can’t go for a whole day without the need to check your phone constantly, you may want to take a moment to pause.

If you are spending so much time Instagramming your experiences that you aren’t actually really experiencing them, you could maybe use a change.

The idea is to remind the social media who is boss. Maybe put some boundaries in place as to when you can and can’t be on it. Invite a close friend or family member to hold you accountable. Experiment with a bit of a fast. Make some intentional log off/unplug times during the day to just be, or to go outside, or to (gasp!) talk to someone.

We were created to live life to the full. Refuse to settle for anything less than that – especially when it comes to something as simple as social media.

Were we not entertained?

Brett Fish

-

January 20, 2016

0

I don’t know about you, but the way last year flew by brings words like “sliding”, “careening” or “diving” to mind. Life has not felt super slow for quite a long time.

Sigh. And probably largely because of all the Adulting that has to happen. Gone are the days of running around in the garden with sticks creating worlds in our minds, or jumping on to our bikes and cycling to the local park. Gone are the days of homework and school sports matches and being bored and watching cartoons on TV.

This is real life now. There’s jobs and rent to pay and increasing petrol prices and that weird smoke coming out of the back of the car that I’m trying to ignore. There have been statues coming down, fees falling and an attempt at seeing our number in power do the same. That momentum seems like it will continue into the new year and so I might have some decisions to make.

WHOSE ENTERTAINMENT IS IT ANYWAY?

Can sport in and of itself be viewed as a positive or a negative thing? Can a movie, play or book be good or evil? Perhaps in some cases where something that is called “sport” is used as an excuse for butchering an animal or a human. Or if a book is overtly racist or sexist or blasphemous, although each of those things can probably be seen as subjective. But for the most part, entertainment seems to be a bit of a neutral thing.

As we head into a new year it always feels like a great time to do a bit of a life stock take and see what needs to be changed, removed completely and strengthened or built up. I invite you to join me for a moment in doing the same with entertainment and how you relate to it:

A healthy (or scary) exercise might be sitting down and trying to figure out a rough estimate on how many hours last year you spent…

(1) Watching TV series, movies, plays

(2) Watching sporting events live or on the TV

(3) Playing computer games, or in my case board and card games and

(4) Reading, blogging, writing, listening…

(5) On social media like Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Instagram, and…

(6) How much money did I spend on all of the above?

As you sit with the results of this activity, go through each one and ask, “Am I okay with that?” “Am I proud that I spent X amount of minutes, hours, days watching soap operas, following the football (including time spent on fantasy game playing) or levelling up my World of Warcraft character?” Plus, of course, the money question…

CHOOSE BETTER IN 2016

If you don’t stop for a moment and reflect on your entertainment choices for 2015, the chances are that you will simply repeat them and possibly do even worse in 2016. In my own country, South Africa, it feels like there is a lot of work to be done to build our country and a great deal of that can happen by us spending time together in entertainment, actually. It can be a good thing. Maybe for some of us it could involve being a little more creative in terms of who we watch with or play against or where we choose to follow our particular entertainment habits.

But I also imagine that for many of us we might wish that we could have a free do-over. Maybe in one of those areas, but possibly even in more. And the truth is you can’t, because the clock will continue to tick closer and closer to the next year and there is no going back.

But there is going forwards.

So choose this day how entertainment will work for you this year: As a distraction, as time out, as time spent with friends doing something you all love. Perhaps also put some boundaries in place and have an idea of the limits you want to impose on it – so that it is always your servant and is never given the opportunity of becoming your master.

Be entertained well in 2016.

A time to sharpen

Brett Fish

-

January 18, 2016

0

My wife and I have just returned from a week long road trip with visiting friends of ours from Americaland.

At one point in the car we were travelling in, a certain topic of contention between tbV [the beautiful Val] and i was brought up. Our housemates had been wrestling with a similar situation and they asked what we thought.

I got very nervous very quickly. Because I know how this conversation ends.

There were some tense moments, there were some interruptions and some raised voices. There were tears.

We didn’t completely resolve the conflict either. But it was good.

IRON SHARPENS IRON

Wait! How can conflict be good? Especially when you don’t arrive at the same conclusion. Well ‘my conclusion’, I mean, surely?

Well, despite a few tears and some emotion, we managed to create a safe space. By having our former housemates witness our side of the conversation and vice versa, we were able to share some strong opinions without crossing any lines. We were able to listen both to what our partner was saying, but also to have an outside perspective of a similar situation playing out in someone else’s lives.

Proverbs 27.17 says, ‘As iron sharpens iron, so one person sharpens another.’

Picture a sword that has been stunningly crafted – maybe your mind goes instantly to young Arthur grasping hold of the mighty Excalibur and pulling it from the rock, or Captain Jack Sparrow fighting off a number of English guards.

A sword being swung through the air often has this almost regal quality. In the hands of a professional swordsman [or woman!] it can appear to dance in the air, to sing.

Yet, if you backtrack a little bit to the moment that magnificent sword is being created by an expert blacksmith, you might stumble upon a seemingly horrific thing (if you didn’t know better).

TRUTH SPOKEN IN LOVE

You watch the blacksmith as he takes a metal hammer and strikes the piece of metal held before him on the anvil. Strike after strike he mercilessly pounds the heated metal, which slowly starts to take shape. The pounding can seem brutal, but when you get to witness the finished product, it all makes perfect sense.

In Ephesians 4, the Bible talks about “speaking the truth in love” and I firmly believe this is the key to a strong growing and healthy relationship.

There are previous times when I have spoken some of the same things I said to Val in the car to her (truth) but more with the point of winning the argument or getting my way, and the love has been lacking. That is not helpful or healthy.

There might have been other times when I have treated her really well and looked after her (love) but have avoided wrestling with the truth of this particular argument, because I know it will be tough or painful or messy. That too is not healthy or helpful.

LEARNING THE DANCE TOGETHER

If I listened to everything Val thought or wanted to do and agreed all the time, things would not end up in the best place they could.

Similarly, if she did the same with me.

Our marriage is strengthened by the fact that we think and work differently in different ways which sometimes see us bumping heads or pushing back and wrestling over ideas and vision and process. But it makes us stronger. As long as we remember the joint messages of “iron sharpens iron” and “speaking the truth in love”.

Sometimes, especially because we both have strong personalities, it helps us greatly to have someone else (a counsellor, a friend, a mentor) in the room to help us to stay on track and remember that loving each other well is much better than being right.

But the iron striking iron is crucial if we are to grow – especially as we tackle difficult topics in our marriage and in South Africa such as how we deal with money, how we engage with race conversations and how we look after the planet better,

tbV and I will need to revisit that conversation again sometime. And it may still not be an easy one. But we both know that we love each other and are both seeking the best for both of us and so it is worth some pain and sweat and conflict to get closer to reaching a solution.

In the meantime we will continue to hammer those blows upon our marriage together with the passion of a blacksmith seeking to craft the strongest and most beautiful weapon in the land.

Put your money where their need is

Brett Fish

-

January 18, 2016

0

How do you define poverty?

Two men sitting in the side of a street in Cuba with some time on their hands were trying to figure this out.

Claudio turns to my friend Darin and says to him, “Imagine you go home tomorrow and you find that you have lost your job, you’ve been kicked out of your house and all your stuff has been repossessed, and someone has found your bank card and cleared out your whole bank account…”

# How long before you have your first meal?

# How many days before you can find a place to sleep?

# When will you have a new job?

Without blinking an eye, Darin responds: “I will not miss a meal. I will have a place to sleep for me and my family by tonight and depending on the situation it might take a couple of days or a week or two to find a new job.”

Claudio looks at him, “How did you do all that?”

Darin responds: “I called someone. I phoned a friend.”

They settled on one possible definition of poverty that day as referring to those people who don’t have that someone to call – the idea of being economically isolated.

SHOW ME THE MONEY

There is a story about the early church in the bible (which you can read about in the book of Acts chapter 2, from verse 42 to 47) which was formed after one of Jesus’ followers and closest friends, Peter, got up and preached a message and 3 000 people decided to follow what was called The Way.

This passage talks about how they would meet in each other’s homes and in the temple and have meals together and a whole lot of different stuff. But one line always stands out for me: ‘All the believers were together and they had everything in common. Selling their possessions they gave to anyone as he had need’ (verse 44-45).

They developed a culture of meeting the needs around them that they became aware of through relationship.

On Sundays mostly, throughout the world, as many church congregations meet together, in many of them there is a moment where there is an opportunity to take some money and put it into a bag or box or plate, and in most cases it is not known what happens to that money again.

While I am not suggesting for a second that we stop giving, I would love to encourage and challenge us all to become a little more interested in connecting our giving to the actual needs that exist in the lives of the people around us (and those further away).

COMMON CHANGE

Let’s go back to Claudio and Darin for a moment. That conversation they had on a dusty Cuban street ultimately led to an experiment happening among friends, and then much later an organisation that was called ‘Relational Tithe’ and now ‘Common Change’.

Through this organisation, groups of friends contribute money to a common purse or account and then share and try to meet the needs of people they care about and are in relationship with. It is certainly not the only way, but it is a really good way and over the last nine years something like $600 000 has been given to meet a wide range of needs all over the world.

I know this because I was one of those (my wife Val received important but expensive dental work we could not afford) and at least three of my friends have been as well.

As a result, Common Change has been brought to Africa.

Which is an easy sell because we already have had the widely popular concept of ‘Stokvel’ for many years, where groups of people contributing monthly into a pot and each month one person gets to keep the pot. And so Common Change takes the concept of ‘Stokvel’ but links it to specific needs.

FOLLOW THE MONEY

All of us can give something. If we truly don’t have any money then we have time and experience and skills to offer.

But most of us have some money we can give and as we dive into 2016, I want to encourage you to be intentional about your giving.

Whether it is your local church or a group of friends starting a Common Change group or simply as an individual or family, try to find the relationship in your giving. It can be easy sometimes to toss a few coins into a bag, or to pass a note out of the window to a nameless stranger at a traffic light or to let some group be the middle man to your giving and someone else’s receiving.

Make your giving personal. Perhaps it is investing in the life and family of the lady who helps clean your home or the man who works in your garden. Maybe it is building into the life and family of a neighbour on your street or someone you met at work or church who you know is going through a rough time. Don’t offer money without offering a little bit of yourself. It makes the giving so much more effective and meaningful, to both of you.

The Persistence of Time

Art
Culture

Brett Fish

-

January 13, 2016

0

This is my favourite painting of all time and Dali is my favourite artist.

I’m not completely sure why this is, but I have quite a lateral all-over-the-place thinking mind and love concepts such as misdirection, Improv and randomness and so maybe that explains some of the resonance. But mostly I like it because it has drippy clocks in it.

Whereas I have generally just enjoyed it for its differentness, today, for the first time, I had a “Eureka!” moment of one thing this picture could mean. The name of the painting is “The Persistence of Memory” which gives a clue, but when I look at the clocks, the idea of “The Persistence of Time” came to mind.

Time is not a solid clock that is stuck in one place and stands firm. Time is a drippy clock that is constantly moving and unable to be contained.

THE YEAR I LOST

1988 was the year that went missing for me. I became friends with the wrong guy at school (it is always nice to be able to blame these things at least partially on someone else) and that year could be summed up by “We played computer games”.

Not that computer games are necessarily bad. And not that there were not some redeeming features of that year because I’m sure there was some relationship stuff and some family stuff and God stuff that was good. But the overwhelming feature of that year was staring at a computer screen. I remember looking back at the end of that year, aged 14 and thinking, “Wow, I wasted that year.”

Because time is a drippy clock. I could not go back and have a do-over. I could not reclaim any of the hours and probably days or even weeks and months spent playing games. I could only resolve to do better the next year. Which I did. Standard eight (grade 10) as we called it back then (you know, when we had to walk 20 miles through the snow to get a bottle of milk each morning, or something) was one of the best years of my life, at least back then. I had seen the problem and I changed some things and was more intentional about the moments of the drippy clock, and it showed.

THE CURRENCY OF HEAVEN

We live in a world that tries to convince us that money (and also money in the form of things and experiences) is what we are aiming for. To the extent that some people work themselves to death to achieve and acquire and amass and only late in life realise that they are alone, or that they have neglected family and friends (for the ironic purpose of gaining things to enrich the lives of their family and friends, at least in their minds).

The clock keeps on dripping. You don’t get to go back and spend more time with family and friends. But you can make changes today that will enable you to do so tomorrow.

I speak often of people as the currency of heaven. Because if you study the Bible, that is what you are going to find. The two greatest commandments are to love God and to love people (your neighbour as yourself as well as the concept of enemy love). And nothing else matters. What you acquire and accumulate and amass will be burnt up. Only people count.

Which brings us back to the drippy clock.

CHOOSE THIS DAY HOW YOU WILL DRIP

We don’t get to do time over. But we can plan how we will spend it in advance.

The clock continues to drip.

See, this is the thing. In 1988 I didn’t choose to spend a year playing computer games. It just kinda happened as I just kinda went with the flow. I wasn’t intentional about how I spent my time and I never at any point chose to interrupt that.

Don’t let that happen to you in 2016.

Your clock is going to drip. But how are you going to spend that time? One thing that may help is identifying for you what are the potential time wasters in your life? And to start putting positive disciplines and good habits and regular routines in place to ensure that when you look back at 2016 there is a smile on your face. A year well lived. And a clock well dripped.

Who is with me?

What if Both Ends didn’t Meat?

Lifestyle

Brett Fish

-

January 11, 2016

0

My wife and I love the meat.

We really do. tbV [the beautiful Val] is more of a lamb person where I am a sucker for all things pig. My boss once gave me a piece of chocolate cake with bacon on it for my birthday [True Story!]

But halfway through 2015 I invited some vegetarian friends of mine to share their stories on my blog and then I did a terribly stupid thing. I read them.

Ha Ha, okay so it wasn’t quite terribly stupid at all, but it did completely wreck my life. But in the best of ways. The fact that stood out the most for me, which I had never really heard before I don’t think, was that it costs the earth so much more to produce a cow for us to eat than it does to produce wheat or maize. A LOT more.

So my wife and I made what felt like to some quite a radical decision and we decided to cut our meat consumption in half. We didn’t quite feel ready to go full vegetarian [and would still be quite slow and hesitant from an enjoyment point of view if we ever did decided to go the rest of the way] but we wanted to make a positive difference.

And how we did it was like this…

NO MEAT WEEK

Every second week we don’t buy any meat and as much as possible don’t eat meat.

Every other week is a normal week where we try to eat as much meat as we normally would have [which is not obsessive at all] but on the no-meat weeks we try and cut it completely out of our diet.

We don’t want our decision to be a burden on other people and so if, during a no-meat week, we go to a friend’s house for dinner and they have prepared meat we will probably eat it, but if there is a space to let them know we are doing no-meat we will take it and if we end up at a gathering where there are meat dishes and other dishes we will simply avoid the meat. But the main focus is not buying and consuming meat.

We tried it for a week, and it was good.

We invited our vegetarian friends to share their favourite recipes with us and I filled two blog posts with the ideas people gave. Also it introduced us to a whole new world of adventure in terms of cooking and preparation as we started discovering new dishes.

And all of a sudden, it was 6 months later, or maybe even more.

TAKE ONE STEP!

It is often easier to simply bury our heads in the sand and pretend the issues aren’t the issues or that they don’t affect us. But when we live in a land struggling to find enough electricity and water we really need to do what we can to make sure that we are not wasting either of those. In a world that is quickly running out of resources for a number of reasons, it really is our responsibility to start recycling and to work towards green products that do less damage and find ways to be better stewards of the world God has entrusted to us.

Cutting our meat consumption felt like one of those decisions for us. And I want to invite you to try it or something like it. A few years ago we took part in a year or so of no-meat Monday where it was just one day a week and maybe that’s a good place to start. I actually found that more disruptive than knowing in advance that the whole of the next week is meat-free for some reason.

One person or family making one small difference here and there makes no huge difference in the greater scheme of things. But when each of us starts taking small steps together, then sooner or later the impact that we have will be world-transforming.

What is one thing you are going to commit to do that you aren’t doing now in 2016 to help look after the world you live in? Who is one person/family you are going to invite to join you in doing that?

Brett Fish

Connect with us