DREAMS OF MANDELA (PERMISSION TO BE BRILLIANT) – Siki Dlanga

In a dream I wrote you a speech. I was important enough to be in the same room as you. No, I will be honest in the dream I was still not important. It was the fact that I only had my name which holds no weight that made me feel significantly more important to you in the midst of great names. In your presence was every reason to feel so much more significant because it was dreams of my freedom that kept you imprisoned for 27 years.

I looked at your face and it lit. Lit by dreams that have been fulfilled as you looked back at me. Your aspirations would be fulfilled through me, my friends and grow through our children. I would love to see you but I would rather I gave you rest so that you would greet one less person and have more rest so I visited you in a dream. I remained brilliant for at least 2 whole minutes. My heart spoke a fresh word because I had seen your face in the reality of my dream. I tried to read my speech but my words diminished because your person filled the room in a way that contrarily suddenly made me feel great.

What makes you so much greater is that our country is rich in resources and minerals. We have diamonds and mines rich with different kinds of gold as if it were all not enough, we have you. In that moment my heart realised your South Africanness makes us so much more affluent.

The name Mandela now robes the hills, the mountains, seas and islands of our country with a royal mantle of dignity and honours anyone who calls themselves South African. Your name adorns our many coloured flag with admiration. Your name is no lesser currency or wealth than the gold and minerals of our land.

The children covered by your 46664 campaign will benefit not only for themselves but their children’s children also. You gave us a future. By your life you lifted the lid that kept us in captivity in the land our predecessors had once freely grazed their cattle. By your carefully chosen words as you declared the new South Africa born you made us realise our own greatness. You challenged us to get out of our inferiority complexes’ and gave us permission to be brilliant.

I know there is a God because it had to take a superior-being to design such a master plan. We were a country that was so broken and desperate for a miracle. You are the perfect miracle at 90 you still amaze us.

Last year in the 90 minutes for Mandela, I wrote a poster hoping the camera man might put it on TV but decided to etch it in my dreams. It reads; “you have shown us how great we can be. My gift to you is that you will not be the last great South African because there is nothing enlightening about shrinking back.”

First published on mynews24.com

the promise is that the end is better than the beginning

“Better is the end of a thing than its beginning:
and the patient in spirit is better than the proud in spirit.”

I can feel the year ending. There’s something exciting about the prospect of an end, even the year is already feeling different. Perhaps the promise of the end promises a new beginning.
It is possibly the reason I am excited about the idea of turning 30 and then eventually getting much older - now I understand why I find aged beings so appealing. They always seem to have it all together. There's this calming effect about them.

I happened to attend a music concert this past weekend and to my surprise there were a whole lot of grey heads. (We think life is only for the young don't we?)

I had the privilege to witness the sweetest deep love between an old couple that sat next to me. This was genuine love that had found it's security over many years. It was like a gold mine of love. Love was in the way they took turns in touching each other's hands gently, love was written in their slightest glance at one another as if they could read what the other felt or needed. Words were no longer necessary. There was no performance to impress. Beautiful rest reigned between them. Each moment they had with one another was thoroughly enjoyed as if they were aware that their bodies would soon expire any day now.

I took much pleasure in the music but those grey heads were quite a sight, Though others were 40, 50 etc. but there was this calm and rest that seemed to come with age and somehow I felt safe in that kind of environment. I didn’t know any of them and now to think of it the only person I knew in that entire room was the friend I’d come to watch as she performed. She obviously could not sit with me. However, I have never felt myself relax so quickly in a place full of strangers.

It came to mind that God did not just create a uniform generation where everyone is the same age. I concluded that the co-existence of different generations bring balance to each another.

Better is the END of a thing than it is beginning.

Eccl 7:8
I will be a very cool old person. I know ;)

beautiful piece of dirt

Hey you…

Hey you beautiful piece of dirt
Aren’t you fascinated by that image starring back at you
Lines on your hands
Blood flowing through your veins
You are alive but are you living
How long did it take to carve you
Heart pumping and you’re not even aware
You’re sacred art

Hey you beautiful piece of dirt
That’s what I sometimes want to say when I see me-you
next time I see you don’t take offense
if I say ‘Hey you beautiful piece of dirt’
and don’t steal my line to pick up a girl

I am subtle sculpture made of the first clay
No that’s Adam’s sons
I’m made of the glittering glowing rib
Refined twice thrice by the Spirit
I am sacred art given a permanent voice

I am because He is
My brokenness can be traced back to the garden
My perfection to the death and the resurrection of the last Adam
My life is as short as delicate as a flower
My existence is meant to be forever
What will it cause it to blossom
Path’s been destined
Free unblemished glorious forever