What Have we Done / Senzeni Na

RantWoman is for the present somewhere between reflexively holding in the Light and ignoring:

--the most recent Islamic State outrage this time in #Barcelona

--the parade of heavily armed Nazis and the car attack on counterprotestors in #Charlottesville

--Various threads of recent protests in Seattle including an echo of elsewhere in the form "Officer, if we agree the stick on my sign is a weapon, do I have a second amendment right to keep carrying it around?"

--Re North Korea #DPRK, is North Korea a cheap way for China to antagonize the US? Should threatening nuclear war by tweet be a violation of Twitter Terms of Service? Should the Terms of Service just include a disclaimer. This platform may not be suitable for sensitive international negotiation and Twitter is not responsible for the outcomes if you insist on trying to use it that way"?

--No, RantWoman still has not read Google dude's MANifesto. Sight unseen, RantWoman is torn. On one hand, RantWoman suggests that Google dude be assigned to a project with a female manager and a team that is 50 % female for the duration of his working life. On the other hand, should Google Dude express even the slightest willingness to serve on the Still Didn't Get the Memo Committee on Email Immoderation, the Committee on Discernment, Leadings, and Nominating, could probably find him a place there. meanwhile, RantWoman has not been tracking but thinks it would be Just Fine if more men would speak out as men about Google Dude.

Now to what is really on RantWoman's mind:

How is it God and the Google and the former choir director at RantMom's church between them served up something RantWoman clearly needed and would not have known even where to look?

How is it RantWoman has never until now heard of

Senzeni Na  ?

Senzeni Na means " What have we done. It has been described as the South African Equivalent of We Shall Overcome. RantWoman finds the phrase "What have we done" theologically curious to say the least. RantWoman is not going to get that thought through in the near future, but is definitely filing it under needs further chewing..

Here is a Wikipedia Entry
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Senzeni_Na%3F

Here are a number of videos in some cases with the descriptive text copied. The Google is bountiful about videos; RantWoman is curious why none of the videos she has sampled so far mention that a group of women sang this song nonstop outside the building where the Truth and Reconciliation Commission met, for the entire duration of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. RantWoman is also vaguely mulling the concepts of Truth and Reconciliation as a whole bunch of labels are getting flung around with respect to identity and people in the United States.

But the videos and in some cases, the short descriptions posted with the videos.
https://youtu.be/j5xp2j0F3wg

With info in Portuguese
https://youtu.be/VS1H4si1igI

Cape Town Youth Choir
https://youtu.be/5fDU1PYWT8A

Stanford Talisman Youth Choir 2016
https://youtu.be/5DkGyhchzYk
The title translated into English is "What have we done?". A well-known South African anti-apartheid protest song, “Senzeni Na” has been sung since the 1950s, and reached the height of its popularity in the 1980s. Since then, “Senzeni Na” has been sung across the world by choirs of all races and colors but has a message that has been particularly poignant for Black South Africans.

https://youtu.be/U8wrRMnxZXM
This song, more correctly spelt as “Senzeni Na?”, means "What Have We Done?. It is a South African anti-apartheid folk song of unknown origin in the Xhosa/Zulu language. It has been around at least since the 1950s, and it reached the height of its popularity during the 1980s. Activist Duma Ndlovu compared its influence to that of the American protest song, “We Shall Overcome". It is commonly sung at funerals,

Other nuggets that also came with Senzeni Na:
RantMom's church got some kind of a Renewing Worship grant through one of their denominational channels. They used part of their money to bring back their former choir director, now a professor of music for a workshop.

RantWoman can totally see why former choir director reminds RantMom of RantDad as a young professor, down to the crew cut, updated just a bit. RantWoman is impressed that academic work included study of the cultures of song and revolutions in Eastern Europe.

RantWoman does not particularly want to think of growing up in a police state. RantWoman is delighted though to think of a teenager finding freedom in his Dutch Reformed Church upbringing by delving into the centuries of hymn tunes catalogued in the back of his church hymnals and in stories of the Old Testament.

Other nuggets from the exercise:

Consensus about worship: intentional gathering in community to connect with each other and encounter God. (Look: they're Presbyterians. RantWoman describes herself as theologically multilingual and can definitely handle these terms. RantWoman was struck by the agreement of several groups in slightly different terms.)

Hymn tunes carrying over across centuries and without regard to language.

The value of singing in languages one does not know as  a way of widening the circle of community.

RantWoman curiously is still not doing so well about "We Must All Sing TOGETHER." On the other hand, RantWoman hates it when she is one of the loudest voices trying to sing. RantWoman can usually hear when she is not in tune and has not the foggiest idea how to fix the problem beyond adding pipe organ enough to bury...

Hold us ALL in the Light.