Prayers and church songs to begin and close meetings at the NGO, government and business levels seem common place here in South Africa. No one even seems to stop and wonder if there are any Jews, Hindus, Muslims, pagans, animists, agnostics or non religious people in the audience who might not feel comfortable participating in these ceremonious activities. You have to wonder if people who automatically do this are even conscious that there might be people in their midst who don’t feel comfortable taking part in a prayer or church song or whether they are conscious that the possibility exists but figure “we” are in the majority and thus what we want goes. You are probably thinking to yourself that Blake has spoken about being a Christian Scientist on several occasions so why does he really care about this and you are right to remember this I guess I am just more conscious of how things that I or others say or do might be received or perceived by others. Also, I come from a country where church and state are “separated”, at least that is what our founding fathers seem to have intended so to be in South Africa where the line between the two seems more blurred and I honestly don’t even know if there is a rule in place to keep the two apart it is taking some getting used to. I thought of this today while at the Gauteng AIDS Summit 2006 which I mentioned yesterday in my blog and which I will attend again tomorrow and write more about in my blog over the weekend. I gotta run now as I am basically just procrastinating from working on my mid-term report for SIT and should get it done to have free time this weekend as Marcilio should be coming tomorrow to stay till Sunday!
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