Two Pilgrims: the Saint and the Visionary

In 1995 a South African priest who had been on an exchange program at my high school invited me to come and write about the New South Africa. Like most of the world, I had closely followed the breathtaking events of liberation. I was especially interested in learning what freedom might mean for children there. My church, the Seekers Community, gave me some financial support to go to South Africa for three summers, and I created a musical called Gift which is now in workshop in Washington, based on the stories I heard from many street children and homeless writers there. I always write from primary sources.

The plot of my musical --- a young man runs away from an abusive home situation to the excitement and brutality of the city, where, with other children, and the careful mentoring of an older writer/caregiver he discovers his gift for writing. Writing saves his life, and he learns how to use his gift to serve other children and his community.

As a child, Peter Pan was my favorite story. I loved the idea of flying away from Captain Hook, and living with the lost boys in a magic place where we could make all the rules. As I worked with South African street children I discovered that the lost boys of Johannesburg were often the strongest, most resourceful children, who find the courage to leave abusive poverty -- destroyed homes to look for something better in the city, under their own African skies. Of course, also waiting for these children are brutality, rape, hunger, humiliation, glue and cold. Like children all over the world, searching for freedom, possibility, dignity -- there are few mentors to take them from one hurdle to the next, to show them how to get through impossible situations. A Spirit-filled mentor can change the life of a child forever.

I want to tell you about Otis Finck. I met him on my first trip when I went with Central Methodist Church's traveling soup kitchen and clinic to the poorest parts of Johannesburg. Otis invited me into his shack in the Twist St. squatters camp. He was caring for a sick older gentleman. On his wall was taped a Bob Marley poster, and a black Christ. On his floor were notebooks full of poems and copies of Homeless Talk newspapers. At that time he was a staff writer who brought the words of homeless people, especially children, to the awareness of Johannesburg's public. Homeless Talk bears witness to the truth of street life for these children. We walked together for hours that night, and he gave me two of his poems. Otis Finck, a street poet from Namibia, is the closest likeness to Christ I have ever known.

On my second trip to South Africa he took me to stay the night in a children's shelter. Because the children adore him, and he loves and cares deeply for them, they trusted me, and brought me their stories, their songs, their dances, their poems. Otis gave me these photographs. And when he read the first draft of my play, he blessed it, and offered to help me in any way he could.

Otis introduced me to the MUKA Project, (Most United Knowledgeable Artists) a talented group of young actors/singers who live in a church basement and create plays to help with the transition in their country. They believe that art should transform the world. I, of course, agree with them, and hope to bring them to America. They gave life to my words on the page with extraordinary love. We spent a very intense week of writing, rewriting, singing and acting together -- although Otis would frequently disappear -- the children were sick, the police had been abusive -- his Holy Spirit was needed somewhere else. One cold night I had arranged for us to stay with the Lutheran minister in a warm home, but when we passed the park where the children were, he sensed danger, and told me to stop the car. The children needed him. When I tried to talk with him about his ministry, he would always stop me. "Look, I'm just being a human being with other human beings.

Otis opened his heart to me. He brought me to the children, he gave me my play, and he took me to artists who could make it live. At the end of our rehearsal, after we had taped our work, the day before I returned to Washington, he disappeared. Once again, going about his Holy business, probably. I didn't even get a chance to thank him.

In another part of South Africa, in the stark wild beauty of the Karoo, 20 miles down a mountainous gravel road is the tiny hamlet of New Bethesda-an extremely conservative Afrikaaner village with a small colored township. Helen Martins (immortalized by Athol Fugard in The Road to Mecca) lived a constrained, locked-in life there, always under the control of her husband, her family, and her rigid church.

At the age of 50, when her husband died, she stopped going to church. She began to create a series of extraordinary eccentric creatures of wire, cement, and cut glass: owls, camels, wisemen, women, children, walking on the road to Mecca. The words God, damnation, heaven and hell ceased to have meaning for her as she created her pilgrims. She filled her house with cut colored glass and mirrors so in candlelight her home was luminous with color. She worked in her camelyard for 17 years, in isolation except for her helper, a man named Koos, whom I met.

After driving through the wild dusty road and coming upon her art, I could not leave. I kept walking among her pilgrims, stunned by their spiritual hunger -- all yearning for light. Yes. This is what I am trying to do with my life -- to create and guide broken children with the brokenness inside me -- to walk as pilgrims, finding dignity in walking together towards the light. This light that is the source of all my creativity, my hope, my love for my family. I hunger for this nameless light. I am instructed by a spiritual fellowship to abandon myself to God as I understand God. Since religion has always been the language of humiliation and degradation for me, I no longer have to stay in that darkness.

I can join Helen Martins pilgrims, with people like Otis as my guide, in the splendid pagan Grace of my call to the Light.

But Helen Martin was alone in her journey. Isolated and rejected by her community, going blind and developing arthritis, she killed herself when she could no longer create. But I am not alone. I am surrounded by love, and the voices of children, and the opportunities for service-at school, at Seekers, and in the communities where I take my plays.

The MUKA Project taught me that in an African play, the community must always tell the story. The individual only has life in community. So I have the chorus sing the theme song for my musical -- the story of the young man who is empowered by art -- healed through the creative act -- discovering dignity through the words on his page.

My words on the page

Roy Barber (Author, Co-Composer) has written and composed eight musicals, and teaches music and theater at St Andrews Episcopal School. He spent the past three summers in South Africa working with children and theater artists preparing Gift. He is a member of Seekers Church.

(See a follow-up story as the MUKA Project came to America, "From the Streets of Johannesburg".)

Read more about the influences in Roy's life growing up in Memphis TN, A Rebel for Love.