THE WAY TO HEAVEN
They say the way to hell is paved with good intentions. Well for me the way to heaven is paved with jacaranda trees.
I find driving through the purple-lined suburbs of Johannesburg at this time of the year, and particularly on this occasion of the feasts of All Saints and All Souls a truly heavenly experience.
They used to be an October reminder that if you haven’t started seriously studying for year-end exams when the jacaranda trees come out you are in trouble. As of now I have converted this attitude to a November reflection on the way to heaven.
I drove up Kildare street in Parkview, (note the operative word “up”) and there at the top was a great crescent of purple surrounding a massive palm tree that surely reached all the way to heaven. So I caught my breath and breathed a prayer of gratitude to God for this vision. And went on my way of life.
I have had a few of these nostalgia trips during the course of this year. I had occasion to visit the country and the town and the house where I was born, in Haarlem, Holland and was fascinated by the littleness, the ancientness of a place I had taken so perfectly for granted. I had occasion to befriend a cousin I had hardly known, and spend a most heartwarming evening with other cousins I had not met in fifty years. We visited the house where my grandparents lived, where my father had lived, the much-loved father who died when I was eight, leaving his young family to build a whole new life a continent away.
I had occasion to celebrate a number of important milestones in my own family of origin, a 60th birthday, a wedding, a 30th wedding anniversary. There were other wider family moments and true, there were some sadder moments of breakdown and loss. All were celebrations of the truth of family life.
The jacaranda-lined street is hardly a kilometer from where our family lived, where my stepfather died, where Chris and I had fallen in love and used to spend our Saturday evenings going to the movies. And those trees were there, but we did not then have eyes to see. It is not far from the cemetery where my stepfather and my mother are buried, or the parish where Chris’ commemorative plaque is mounted next to those of his mom and dad. But this November my special garden of repose will be that street and the inner joy I experienced and can carry with me. And I will go there as often as I can while the jacarandas are still in bloom and their fallen petals create that messy purple carpet. That too is part of the reality as I cherish the vision and all the memories of my loved ones and thank God for the saints they are and the saints we, who remain, try to be. See you there?
Toni Rowland

MARFAM NEWS.
Email marfam@icon.co.za or homefun@icon.co.za or phone 011 789 5449 for details.
WIDOWED MINISTRY. Losing a spouse is one of life’s most traumatic experiences and can upset one’s whole life routine and even one’s sense of self. A current initiative of the SACBC Family Life Desk and MARFAM is to provide peer support for widowed people, those widowed through AIDS or through many other causes. There will be a RETREAT FOR WIDOWED PEOPLE in Johannesburg on 23rd NOVEMBER 2003.
No 4 Issue of the magazine MARRIAGE AND FAMILY LIVING is still available.
ADVENT AND CHRISTMAS family reflection booklet available shortly.
2004 FAMILY LITURGICAL CALENDAR – with a particular focus on the Family Life Desk’s chosen theme of Parenting for 2004, the International Year of the Family will also be available shortly.

News from the SA CATHOLIC BISHOPS’ CONFERENCE FAMILY LIFE DESK -
A section for the Family Life Desk will be set up soon on the SACBC website.
Although I, Toni Rowland am the coordinator of the SACBC Family Life Desk and am also involved in MARFAM, this is just one of the movements in the Church devoted to the needs of families and its main work is producing publications for family enrichment.
Other local movements with a specific focus on family relationships are:
Couples for Christ, Catholic Engaged Encounter, Marriage Encounter, Retrouvaille, Schoenstatt Family Movement, Teams of Our Lady (Equipes)
Links to these movements are being made on the MARFAM website and will be put on the SACBC website too.
In addition many sodalities and groups and organizations attend to needs of families as well and some dioceses do have a Family Life Department offering various programmes. More information on request.
MAKING MARRIAGE MORE (24th August – 5th October) Although it has been difficult to extract feedback we have heard that many parishes did celebrate the marriage season, particularly Marriage Day on the 5th October. Many offered an opportunity for a renewal of commitment by couples, some held reconciliation services, and I heard of at least one place where couples who had been married according to traditional custom but not in church had “their rings blessed” as the colloquial saying goes.
I had an opportunity to meet with family life representatives in various places on my travels around the country recently and establishing contacts and local needs, offering workshops or retreats will be my modus operandi for establishing the Family Life Desk for the next while.
I was pleased to have an opportunity to catch up with delegates at the Pan African Marriage Encounter meeting held in Johannesburg and hope that these contact will be fruitful in future.
A meeting of family life movements was held in Johannesburg on 28th October to build community, share information and insights. Of particular concern was the most effective ways in which the INTERNATIONAL YEAR OF THE FAMILY can be celebrated for the benefit of families.
INTERNATIONAL YEAR OF THE FAMILY 2004
This United Nations initiative commemorates the 10th anniversary of the International Year of the Family in 1994. The SA Government’s Welfare and Development Department has made this focus a priority, various churches or Faith Based Organisations (FBOs) are working together and we hope that, through highlighting the family as a social structure and a system which is more than a collection of individuals, the interests of families of all kinds will be served in the year ahead. The various movements of the SACBC Family Life Desk have agreed to adopt the theme of PARENTING. This allows us to address every parent-child situation in whatever type of family.

THE FAMILY THAT PRAYS TOGETHER STAYS TOGETHER
THE FAMILY THAT PLAYS TOGETHER STAYS TOGETHER
THE FAMILY THAT STAYS TOGETHER THROUGH GOOD TIMES AND BAD
IS A WITNESS TO THE POWER OF LOVE
THE FAMILY THAT CANNOT STAY TOGETHER NEEDS LOVE, GOD’S AND OURS.

GATHERING NEWS AND THE MEDIA. Apart from the MARFAM resources there are many ways to gather news about church-related matters. Below are just a few and some comments about Catholic media.

MEDIA SEMINAR – “Globalisation, Catholic Social Teaching and Hollywood: A Media Literacy Response” Three evening lectures at St Augustine College, 11-13 November to be organized by Pauline Books and Media, Johannesburg.
Includes “Healthy Families: Using Regular Popular Movies and TV for Better Relationships.”
……………………………
THE SOUTHERN CROSS, is South African’s Catholic weekly newspaper. I cannot but endorse the comments taken from the current editorial of the editor Gunther Simmermacher published on their website www.thesoutherncross.co.za ...
The problem goes deeper than that, however. Many Catholics are too apathetic about the activities of their own Church. In many parishes, and indeed chanceries, the Catholic media, the only source of information about the Church available for most Catholics, are treated with indifference or even contempt. Few parishes actively and consciously promote The Southern Cross or Radio Veritas—usually not because of hostility towards these organs, but because such promotion is regarded as largely as an irrelevant distraction. It is here that the Catholic Church’s failure to assert itself in public begins. The hard truth is this: if Catholics cannot visibly muster enthusiasm about their own Church through use of its media, then we cannot expect public broadcasters to do so. If we are angry at the SABC’s failure to broadcast events such as Mother Teresa’s beatification, we first ought to examine our collective attitude to ourselves...
PS. I felt chuffed seeing my picture on the Southern Cross website as one of their regular monthly columnists.

RADIO VERITAS, South Africa’s Catholic Radio station “that brings you the good news for a change, has been broadcasting 24 hours per day to listeners in Gauteng on fm 92.7 and the Western Cape on mw 729 from 5th October until 2nd November and will then revert to shortwave 7.24 for 4 hours per day. The programmes have been varied, not necessarily all everybody’s cup of tea, but particularly welcomed was the devotional side and the Holy Hour from 12 – 1pm that includes daily Mass.

ZENIT is a regular source of news of the worldwide Church, but its main focus is on the Pope and events in Rome.
VATICAN CITY, OCT. 31, 2003 (Zenit.org).- John Paul II says that peace requires the purification of the memory of individuals and peoples through forgiveness. It is "an indispensable premise for an international order of peace," the Pope said in a message made public today to participants in a congress organized by the Pontifical Committee for Historical Sciences.

AFRICAN NEWS - CATHOLIC INFORMATION SERVICE FOR AFRICA (CISA) cisa@wananchi.com produces regular bulletins of items of interest, also not only African. HIV/AIDS one of African’s major problems features regularly and we ask all readers to pray for peace and justice on the African continent.
ETHIOPIA: Free AIDS Drugs to the Poor. ………
AFRICA: Clinton Brokers Landmark AIDS Deal ……….
BOTSWANA: AIDS Centre Wins Award on Poverty Eradication ………
SUDAN: Peace in Sight, Some Matters to Settle First. …. Civil war in Sudan began in 1983, largely because of the introduction of Sharia Law, after people in the Christian and traditionalist south revolted against the government. The war has killed more than 2 million people, caused immense damage and left millions of internally displaced persons. (Source: Fides)
ZIMBABWE: Protestors Ask South Africa to Intervene
ZIMBABWE: Act on Human Rights Violators, World Churches Say…… “The World Council of Churches,” the letter said in part, “is deeply concerned at the deteriorating law and order situation in Zimbabwe. During the year 2003, there [has] been an unprecedented increase in incidents of police harassment and brutality against human rights defenders and members of the Judiciary.”
The WCC urged the government “to take immediate steps to restore the rule of law and put an end to arbitrary arrests, torture and killings.”

VATICAN: Uphold Human Dignity in Advertising, Says Holy See
Noting the positive contributions that advertisers make to economic, social and even moral progress, a Vatican official said that nonetheless he wished to underscore "several principles and concerns."
Archbishop John Foley, president of the Pontifical Council for Social Communications, was speaking in Brussels, Belgium, on Tuesday, October 28, 2003, where he addressed the World Federation of Advertisers on the occasion of the federation's 50th anniversary. His talk was entitled "A Good Name is the Best Advertisement."

Giving what he said was the first principle, he said, "Being is better than having," adding that humanity’s God-given dignity depends on the former (being), not the latter (having)
Archbishop Foley urged that the poor should not be put down, “even subconsciously”, and exhorted advertisers to “emphasize quality, emphasize efficiency, emphasize even better grooming and cleanliness and good appearance -but please do not suggest that a possession is going to make one person better than another person."

Dear Campaigners
30 days to go! So what are you doing for World AIDS Day?
Please find attached a form that can be filled in and emailed or faxed back to us at UNAIDS so that we can profile your events on our new website. The form is self explanatory. If you would like to email it then please save your changes and send it as an attachment to wac@unaids.org

Ecumenism and interreligious dialogue are currently of interest. The International Year of the Family projects will be developed with other Faith Based Organisations.
CHRISTIAN VIEW
www.ChristianView.org is a strong defender of the rights and beliefs of Christians in general mainly in the political arena acting as a very efficient parliamentary watch-dog.

(www.2-in-2-1.co.uk is a website all about marriage. You can even visit their 2-in-2-1 Health club! As they say “Many of us jump at the chance to exercise our bodies in the gym, at the pool or on the playing field. Here we give you the chance to give your marriage that “Keep Fit” treatment so it stays in top shape!