The Sound of Sacred Silence: A Theology for Noisy Times Scripture: “Be still, and know that I am God.” (Psalm 46:10) By Harold Mawela Akasia, Pretoria Part One: The Architecture of Absence Let me tell you about a Tuesday that nearly broke me. It was last year, in this very city of Pretoria. The rains had failed again—dimbaza, we call it in the old tongue—and the dust from the informal settlements across the Apies River blew into my chest like the ashes of forgotten promises. I sat on my stoep in Akasia, the sky the colour of a rusted roof, and I listened. Nothing. Not the comforting hum of loadshedding that silence I know too well. Not the distant toyi-toyi from a protest in the CBD. Not even the rogue taxi hooting its three-note hymn to impatience. Just silence. The kind of quiet that presses against your eardrums like a thumb on a bruise. I had been praying. For weeks. Maybe months. For my nephew, Thabo, who had graduated with honours from TUT but could not find work because the econ...
The Scaffold of Spirit-Led Success By Harold Mawela Akasia, Pretoria A Personal Confession: The Hole in My Roof Let me tell you about the morning the heavens fell into my living room. It was a wet January in Akasia, the kind where the Jacaranda leaves turn to slippery pulp on the pavement and the potholes along Daan De Wet Nel Drive become baptismal pools for reckless taxi drivers. I had just finished painting my ceiling—a labor of love, I told myself. Three coats of white gloss. I was building a sanctuary. But I had not counted the cost. I had not calculated the weight of the water tank in the loft. I had not factored in the rust eating through the support beams. I had not sat down, as the Scripture commands, to determine whether I had sufficient to finish. And so, at 2 AM, with a sound like a gunshot and a groan like Goliath falling, the ceiling collapsed. Water, insulation, and seven years of my wife's stored memories rained down on my new couch My neighbour, Bra Vusi, knocked o...