Early Mission Photo

This is an early photo of my sister and me in the Central Pacific, with our guardian Temeeti. I would put this photo around 1965 -- early in our missionary experience -- as we both look very young, and are both still wearing Western clothes. That soon changed. OBSERVATION: Temeeti is presumably plucking a chicken.

Pigeons in Church

I shall tell the story of a minister who had the problem of pigeons in his Church. Apparently they entered the Church through the belfry. They were a "right nuisance", disrupting services of worship, and leaving feathers and droppings all over the Church. There was a flood of suggestions as to what might be done -- and yet no solution. The day came when the minister had had enough. He entered the Church with an air rifle and shot them all. Then he quietly discarded their remains. Everyone was amazed. Where did the pigeons go?

The Beginning of the End?

A heatwave is about to hit the USA. But did anyone look at the long-term forecast for Europe? There is another, dangerous heatwave on the way -- if climate models are correct (see the image). "Just when you thought it was safe to go back in the water ..." OBSERVATION: Son M said, Fake news! It is not fake news. It is, some say, the beginning of the end.

‘We Both Take Drugs’

A young man came to see me in my vestry. He said that he took drugs -- and he looked the part. "Is it a good thing or a bad thing?" he asked. "It isn't a good thing," I said. He leaned onto my desk: "Reverend, do you take drugs? Mind-altering drugs?" "I suppose I do," I said, "It's a maintenance dose. I take it on prescription." "So, what's the difference?" he asked. "We both take drugs." OBSERVATION: What really distinguished me from the counselee, though, was that my drugs were safely prescribed by a doctor. His were not. His drugs were off the street.

Book of Testimony

Our city Church was so full of testimonies that we decided to capture these in a small book -- a Book of Testimony. What eventually happened to that, I do not recall. It was not completed, and I think is all still in the hands of the editor. OBSERVATION: The image shows the first of three pages of what was wife E's testimony. There were some powerful testimonies among ordinary people. It would have been a very special book.

Hard Deaths

Ministers are often called upon when a person is dying. I was just watching a video of a hospice nurse, speaking of "hard deaths". People say that death is beautiful, she said, but that is not always true. In my own experience, there may be a hard death because a person is suffering to death, or there may be a hard death because a person is terrified of dying. It is not always as one would expect, either. The reprobate may die in peace, while the saint may die in a complete panic. I am trying to think, but ... maybe a third, maybe half of deaths are "hard deaths".

Making a Decision

Back in 2021, I received an Offer of Publication, from a major publisher. That was my 380-page book Everything, Briefly. What should I do? I examined the offer. I checked out the publishers thoroughly. Then I decided to go to one of my favourite benches in Cape Town (the one in this photo) and pray and not to leave the bench until I had made a decision. I decided to accept the offer. You may click on the photo to enlarge.

Learning About Fund-Raising

When I first entered ministry, I knew very little about fund-raising -- and I mean that in the broadest sense -- keeping a Church afloat. Nobody taught us that in seminary! Yet in general, ministers become first class fund-raisers -- and they may underestimate the vast experience they have gained. I myself, as time went on, understood more and more about funding a Church. At one of my lowest moments, back in 1994, the Church treasurer told me that the Church was insolvent. I went to an older minister for help and advice. Ultimately it is a raft of strategies that makes a Church work, not a single one. That same Church where the treasurer announced insolvency ultimately saw its highest income in generations. OBSERVATION: One also learns a lot about how one should view the finances of a Church. I have often said, it is not the same as a business. The photo shows a busy clothes sale.

Seven Lectures

I have forty-two lectures -- maybe more -- this coming semester. I decided to prepare seven lectures yesterday (outlined in the image) -- which is to say, revise them. Each of them was about 5,000 words. Alas, I failed in my quest. By 11:00 pm I had done five lectures. OBSERVATION: This morning I reached seven lectures. My students complained about lecture seven. They said it was too hard. So I rearranged it -- not to make it simpler, but to make the presentation simpler.

Life Not Uninteresting

Oy vey. Life has not been uninteresting. This is me in the High Court this week. I am advised: “Your story is not completely safe to publish.” So, yes, the pressure was intense. I needed to work through the night to rise to it – but it paid off. OBSERVATION: How do you like my colour co-ordination with the court? Impeccable, don’t you think?

Fatal Dose

I handed a prescription to a chemist. He looked at it twice. He said: "We have a problem with this, Sir." I said: "You haven't got it." He said: "It's a fatal dose. You'll be dead in a day." OBSERVATION: If the chemist hadn't picked it up, I would have picked it up. It was 30 tablets a day, instead of one tablet a day for 30 days. One wonders, though, how many such mistakes didn't get picked up. It does happen. I know one old man whose doctor, just recently, stopped his medication and he was instantly recovered!

Image Manipulation Tools

Recently I had to replace my Chromebook computer (Chromebook computers run Chrome, Android, and Linux side by side on the same desktop). So I installed the powerful Linux GNU Image Manipulation Program (GIMP). But oh, where did all the functions go? It was a stripped down version. Here is a fast way to add a massive suite of features to GIMP via the terminal in Linux: a collection of 500+ artistic filters and image manipulation tools. In the Linux terminal,

enter: 

sudo apt update

then enter:

sudo apt install gimp-plugin-registry gimp-gmic -y

Foothills of Catastrophe

There is a worrying heat wave in Europe. Hugh Montgomery, professor of intensive care medicine at University College London, says, “This isn’t the new norm at all; this is the foothills of absolute catastrophe.” Unfortunately, I think he is quite right. OBSERVATION: And yet, I think that our approach to this problem is still reactive. We don't yet have the understanding to correct it on this or that philosophical principle.

POSTSCRIPT: The "father of environmental ethics", Holmes Rolston III, rightly saw that "the epistemic crisis is as troubling as the environmental crisis, and one must be fixed before the other can."

Two New Designs

Just when you think you are all washed up ... I am pleased to see that two of my electronic designs are published in the July 2026 Silicon Chip Magazine: 

1. Random Traffic Lights, and 

2. A Proximity Sensor. 

They both have special features. At the push of a button, the Traffic Lights randomly fail (a nice South African touch), and the Proximity Sensor is diode-based: by using reversed diodes for a potential divider, an op-amp input becomes very sensitive to the nearness of a human body. I took the photo of South African traffic lights in Thembalethu.

Cape Town Hotel School

It's just a pretty picture today -- a photo of wife E at a function at the Cape Town Hotel School last week. As a guest there, one is in fact a guinea pig. Yet they offer first class service and food.