Vocatus atqua non vocatus, deus aderit - Carl G. Jung
While the Nicene Creed declared Pan dead; in worship, it made my dead bones live
Ndiyakholwa ku Thixo omnye: An incantation that sutured my mind
When the world had wounded it with intellectual cerebrations
Preventing a spillage of logical matter on the thin pages of my NIV Bible
In this finite dwelling of eternity, I found a place strong enough
To accommodate all the parts of me and hold under the warring weight
With the fourteen stations of the cross surrounding me at eye-level
I knew that anything life would throw at me would be thrown back onto those walls
Integrated into the stations commensurate with our worldly suffering
I learnt to walk amongst these isles, holding onto yellowwood pews
Whose hard surface comforted many aging and faithful congregants
Before being whisked away by an eager adolescent chaperoning my blessing and hers
A tradition I took up myself when my hip could carry the weight of a toddler
While the church itself became the ship of Theseus
Living up to its name and being resurrected in the name of modernity
Ndiyakholwa ku Thixo omnye remained: At the very least I had the one God I believed in
Words written in an anchoring prayer book which once belonged to my mother
On the cover page, her name, written in a font I could recognize anywhere
Always in black, she never wrote in blue, "Cosanostra," a pseudonym
A necessity during apartheid South Africa where only one narrative was tolerated
To both distance and proximally connect herself with her liberation art and liberation
This woman who braved rubber bullets and bears a scar on her left inner thigh
I could not connect her, the prayerbook and this church of the Resurrection
In my conscious lifetime, I do not recall seeing her proud frame in any of these pews
The prayerbook in mint condition when she gave it to me, a witness of her absence
After her confirmation, she was no longer able to sing the words with conviction
"Ndiyakholwa ku Thixo omnye?"
Perhaps confirmation was merely an appeasement to my grandmother
She was never truly able to reconcile the reality of her life with this one God
The stations of the cross may as well have been hieroglyphics
Anachronistic images whose depictions of suffering had grown mould
Such a disappointment, two millennia after the crucifixion, black people suffer still
The glass in the windows which slowly accumulated at the bottom of the frame over time
She slowly drained onto the floor of this holy place only to slip through its cracks
Anglicization that was Anglican could not wrap its liturgical tongue around her name
And could therefore not frame her existence or provide answers to her personal catechism
Into the contentious soil of Meadowlands from whence she came, she went
Making her way to Lenasia, her final resting place, but not immediately
She traded the creed and cross for Coltrane and his highly-skilled contemporaries
Wind instruments became the sharp end of the knife Batswana women are rumoured to hold
Not until she grew into her fullness with Jazz her perpetual leitmotif and lingua franca
And the blues affirming her values and dignity, even the Group Areas Act could not contravene
Growing beneath this sycamore of a woman who spread far and wide in my twinkling eyes
With the ascetism of Clifford Brown, she nourished my pupation with diligence
Ndiyakholwa ku Thixo omnye, and can therefore believe in this one woman
Her confidence, and her ability, in true blues tradition, to wrangle desperate circumstances
Into a confident daughter, who has dared to live beyond her sociological predicaments
Whose lyricism and style of life confronts the racial pathologies of our time
Today, I can't walk through The Church of the Resurrection without bumping into pews
There has been a psychological domicide and displacement of spirt and unfamiliarity
A different community calls my name in my sleep and my waking hours are spent on my way
What remains is the spiritual penetration of the creed: Ndiyakholwa ku Thixo Omnye
