Rob Bell commented about the Dali Llama and Bishop Desmond Tutu's ability to transition from the gravity of human suffering to the lightheartedness of our human experience seamlessly.  He said that to endure the suffering of humanity one must have a deep seated sense of humor that bubbles through the pain.  He told of the Dali Llama tickling the Bishop during a hug at a forum.  Rob happened to be seated next to these two iconic figures and when the tickling commenced he snapped a picture of it with his cell phone!  I guess this picture could represent that humor bubbling through the soul of the people of Zimbabwe.  For some reason Jimmy, Andrew, and I were recruited to be in the choir one night in Harare.  Did I mention we can't speak any Shona?  And if you look very closely you can see that my choir robe is on inside out (Jimmy gets credit for that one because he wanted to switch robes with me while we were waiting outside in the dark).  

Well the experience was quite exhilarating - I can now say I crashed an African Choir (and an African Wedding - more on that later).  We got to process in with the choir swaying back and forth singing words to which Jimmy, Andrew, and I simply sang 'I have no idea what I am singing' and tried to hit the right notes, which didn't work out very often.  Then they had us come up front to help do a song with a group of about 7 men, and I got to play the drum on this one.  Now I had been playing the drum all week and received numerous comments about my mad skills (which I am friggin pumped about - a bunch of African people said I had good rhythm).  However on this song the singer turned back and told me that my drum was out of tune and that I should stop playing.  Ouch - ego buster.  So all the while we are doing this song I am up there having one of those internal fights in my head.  You know the kind I am talking about - where you are arguing with yourself over whether he was really saying I was way off beat or that the drum needed to be tightened.  It was kind of a stale mate, so I had to just smile and clap during the song because I had no idea what they were singing.  

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