Emerging Africa

I thought it worth mentioning the Afrika Burns festival which according to the website is going to take place between the 22nd and 25th November near the Tankwa Karoo National Park, about 3 hours north of Cape Town.

Modelled on the legendary "Burning Man" festival, it seeks to create a temporary autonomous zone in the middle of the desert, with the content coming not from a commitee but from the participants themselves. The theme for the inaugaral SA event is "Tribe". Tickets range from R100 - R350, based on what is affordable.

All who attend are encouraged to contribute whatever they want to: from sculpture and installations, to musical or dramatic performances, environmental experimentation, to almost anything else one can think of. And my imagination is "on fire" here ...

I visualise guerilla Liturgies, Audio Visual Performance, workshopping any number of salient topics, Jeremiah-type prophetic enactments, St Francis style preaching to the desert, Jesus inspired Shamanism, busking, practicing The Healing Arts of the Holy Spirit, and of course much communing with and getting to know artists, prophets, pagans, and kooks.

The core principles alone are food for thought: COMMUNAL EFFORT, PARTICIPATION, CIVIC RESPONSIBILITY, IMMEDIACY, DECOMMODIFICATION, GIFTING, LEAVING NO TRACE, RADICAL INCLUSION, RADICAL SELF-RELIANCE, RADICAL SELF-EXPRESSION.

For those interested in missional apologetics, John W Morehead gives an imaginative, prophetic evangelical response to Burning Man in his essays
"Burn, Baby, Burn, Christendom Inferno: Burning Man and the Festive Immolation of Christendom Culture and Modernity" and "Apocalyptic Man Ablaze: The Hope of Burning Man's Effigy Fulfilled in the Risen Holy Fool"

I'm still investigating, and have not as yet made sucessful contact with an organiser (all I have to go on is the website) but from what I understand it will be what we make it, and I for one will be heading north into the unknown, for the unwritten adventure of the open page ... What might G-d be saying or doing at Afrika Burns?