Trees Genuflect Before the Wind

On the way to donate a bakkie full of bougainvillea branches to Pikitup's compost making project, I was watching the wind whip the trees around and trying to understand Third Wave Post Denominationalism.

"It's a movement that claims, under the rubric of Christian unity, that all Christian denominations are invalid--their members aren't true Christians or, at least, they aren't truly saved. This is a sort of hyper-fundamentalism which thinks that not only all Protestant denominations, but the Catholic Church as well, aren't valid expressions of Christianity. And, not too surprisingly, the movement thinks all other religious and philosophical belief systems on earth are invalid too and even under demonic influence."

Just what -I wondered, as a shower of Jacaranda leaves enveloped the bakkie - is a demonic influence?

Could it be whatever it is that we reject? That which doesn't fit within Our Side in the divine Lila? That which is so "other" that other people suspect it's in fact the Shadow of our own beliefs and desires?

I kind of ran my head into this suggestion with my rant, below, about Jacob Zuma. I'm left wondering if perhaps "Umshimiwami" is just another face of the coin of bigoted intolerance we see in White Supremacist ravings, and if maybe I'm not displaying more than a little uninformed bigotry myself.

As may be, the trees bowing deeply in the wind made my eyes cross and my brow furrow in an attempt to stand inside the shoes of someone convinced that this world is indeed run by demons.

Eventually, I could just about see the Hamadryads falling down laughing.

Outside of civilisation, what is it in the world which is so evil that it needs special spiritual warriors to cast it out? That needs post denominationalists to covertly anoint an entire village with cooking oil? That recommends special protection against the forces of "witchcraft" for an aspirant politician?

By now, the breeze itself was in gales of laughter.

And I realised, once again-reminding myself to take a lesson from the Hamadryads and the wind-tossed trees- that the surest antidote to human folly is a great, big, raucous chuckle.