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you think you will remember, you think you could not forget.

Pet

[a short story]

I stand at the window, wringing my hands. Out in the yard the dog is stalking a bird along the fence line. It always fascinated me, the way his body tensed, every muscle poised for the aim of possession. He’s a machine, ready to spring, to strike and yet so patient watching—as if time could lie down and beg at his paws. The power in that stance, it was the way I first saw you. I wanted to be absorbed by a power like that.

Your desire was intoxicating. I tattooed my skin with that want; the strength it feed into my veins was a drug. The way your glance owned me, controlled me, dictated the way I flicked my hair, moved my eyes to meet yours. I wanted that want, which was a weakness you uncovered. And the more I loved, the more it fueled your power over me. I didn’t understand then, couldn’t have—or so I naively attempt to justify my youth, to transmit bravery where there was only ignorance and blindness. I didn’t know, that freedom was not losing myself in you, to you. That freedom was not possession anymore than drowning in a sea is freedom.

The dog lurches into the bush, I see the fluttering wings, the desperate attempts at freedom. And I can imagine the teeth piercing through her breast, the crunching of hollow bones, the popping gush of warm, damp blood. I cannot imagine the rush of that domination, the Godlike power of taking life, of deciding fate. I know why you crave it. I don’t blame you.

I stand at the window and examine the dish in my hands. How many times have my hands cradled this fragile glass and my mind raced to its destruction? The ability to shatter it, to lift it and hurl it across the room builds in me with adrenaline. It’s a hysteric, chaotic force—power. But I reined it in, perhaps that was my weakness. You conjured the colors to the surface of my skin with your hands, called my voice out of my mouth. And instead of hating you I loved you the more for your possession of the courage I lacked. But no, that wasn’t love; it was something else, a blurry line between admiration and horror. Fear. Like my Sunday schoolteacher talked about trusting in God. I swallowed that lesson too easily. Love and fear… she was so wrong.

The plate is cracked anyway. For all the days I stood grasping it so tightly, straining it. It began as a fracture, a tiny crack in the surface. But with each increasing pressure it breaks into little fissures, spreading like spider webs underneath, invisible lines of breaking. I am sure one day I will hold it and it will dissolve in my hands. But that is not the finale I would like, there is less satisfaction in slow decay then the hurling. Is that why you always pushed harder? Where you trying to prove your strength, your superiority, or was it that you too were taught the wrong lessons?

The dog is running to the back door, scratching to be let in. Eyes warm and brown and endless, and there are pale soft feathers curled in his gum, blood crusted on the hairs near his mouth. Why didn’t I see that, the first time I looked at you? I push him away angrily. A few months ago I would not have wept over the death of a bird, but I feel the liquid rolling into my eyes like the flash floods in this valley. He does not understand the disdain towards his accomplishment, his nature. He sulks.

The melody of that bird used to greet me in the strawberry blonde strands of sunrise, snuffed out. It is too much, too close to home. I set the plate down and saunter across the linoleum, my jaw set in determination.

I pull out my suitcase. But those eyes bore into me, pleading, infinitely melancholy and apologetic. It’s only his nature. I sink to the cool tile floor and he muzzles my shoulder, drops his head into my lap, my hand involuntarily moves to stroke him. Forgiveness of the unrepentant, another lesson I swallowed to easily, learned wrongly. Again I find myself waiting for you.

29/24

exhale. inhale. exhale. inhale.

a simple pattern that guarantees living. I'm not sure where I'm at right now, or what this journey is.

they say something, some line, about days like this.

I tip my head down, eyes refusing to meet theres

I stick my hands deep in my pockets as if I could find some reserve of strength there,

some lost memory of myself, like a wrinkled receipt, like a cool copper penny

I wish my eyes had windshield wipers instead of lids to blink, eyelashes to flutter...

I would swoosh these visions off the side, they'd gather crunched into the bottom

and I would swipe them off

I would drive through birds and storms and wires

freedom

I do not want peace.

I want freedom.

libertas.

you said it so elegantly. you said it so plainly.

that I wanted to swallow it.

coughing up my heart as I do, too often.

swallow it, as I wish to swallow the moon.

on a day like this. I'd crunch on the glory of fallen leaves, wet slicked to the ground

and call forth a million ghosts to haunt my head. memory.

i want to belong. i want to belong somewhere else.

is it a hushed voice within me?

the holy dove with a broken wing.

faith.

laughter so loud, it clobbers down my spine making me shiver. I do not want to take part.

I imagine the fire escape, our voices trailing off into night and fog over that cold iron

wringing our hands, tapping our feet, so many noises to fit the space where our words could go

and I couldn't say... why I cried over that movie, over the scene where they smile.

but it seemed they were taking in their hands the freedom I yearn for,

and it broke, like a dam inside me, to envy them so, to reach so... stretching like a yoga pose

years, where will I be, where will you go?

all the old metaphors, they pop and simmer like ashes departing from a fire, floating.

worn edges.

the end of being proud.

stand apart, stand alone, but ask. speak.

resurrection

I've been silent here while life shifted and changed a million directions.

But now, perhaps it is time for words again.

There are things worth remembering. Conversations and seemingly inconsequential moments of revelation that may reshape my self if I pay them due attention.

So, words will begin again.

My time in Africa was like a deep breath in, a cherished silence I held in without the ability to exhale or express... and it still feels like that, a weight inside my chest, a bird perched on a branch with wrestling wings, about to take flight into something.

and now I am back at university, "back" and here for the first time really.

South Africa

Yesterday, Shannon and I met with Gloria & Rodney of the Umgeni Community Empowerment Center, who are involved in ministry to the "ladies of the night" and other people living on the streets. They counsel, love, pray, and empower (through food, through jobs, through being a safe haven) to move people off the streets. Their story is so inspiring too, they were comfortable in their church in what we'd call the suburbs and God kept speaking to them that they weren't where He wanted them. Eventually "after much time, kicking, and screaming", they sold what they had and moved into the city and God started leading them on this adventure, turning even trials into a journey. Their car was stolen, and before it was recovered, they had to walk down streets they never would've and started making relationships. And God continues to bless them and is expanding their ministry, mostly by faith and sacrifice.

We had the chance to meet some of the girls (and they sadly are girls) and I felt overwhelmingly honored to be with them. We were invited to a baby shower for one of the them next week. It is heartbreaking to look at where they've been and at the same time beautiful to see how God has and is raising them up out of those situations. Standing with them in a worship service, I felt like I had so much to learn from them. This young teenager was glorifying God from the moment I met her, telling me her testimony of being on the streets, and how she can now go to sleep with a smile on her face for the first time in thirteen years. She kept saying, "if you knew where I was, and where I am..." Their passion for the God that sought them, even "in the gutters" is inspiring, and now, they are ministering to girls (and guys) in the same place they were.

We're also working with Jo Carlson (a friend of Shan's) and Cave' (a young Congelese woman) who saw a need among the many refugees from other African countries and just started teaching them English and life skills-- and from that have grown into Woman Across Borders.

Every meeting we've gone into in the past two weeks have blown our minds with the Spirit bringing unity of vision, even, or especially the ones we didn't have much hope for. It's exciting, genuinely... I feel this sense of momentum and anticipation. God is stirring here (and in so many places). I'm also reading A Generous Orthodoxy which is challenging and the kind of book that starts questions instead of ending them. In some ways I feel like I'm finding Jesus again, or maybe just learning something new about Him, like vision correction or integration. It's not that I ever wanted out of the Christianity boat, not at all, but before Uganda I was kind of in this headlock of not knowing how to show people Jesus was relevant to them, and I feel like I'm (re)discovering the Spirit of Jesus in normalcy. How life is relationships and worship and work and ministry, and ministry, relationships,worship, and work are just living.

I stand braced between so many things... an accumulation of experiences cherished or discarded, a house of memory with an open door and unpacked boxes. Exhausted by a language about God that has become reduced, exhausted by -isms and finding my thoughts unconsciously shaped by them, finding words and borders that define and label and reduce life, and me, and you, and God to finite... when everything inside of me sings of a truth of infinites, of eternity. So many contrary pulls, the shifting and shedding of the world as it moves into post-modernism... but into what, we are all being defined by what we are no longer, by our growth, by our changing, and yet the rationalism clings on for a new set of definitions and division. My nature is bent on having definitions, an analysis to every moment, a wondering at what I would be thinking if I had already learned what I do not now know. But, that's not the point. Really it isn't. I say that more to myself than anyone else. The point is that God didn't step in with a magic wand, but wrapped himself into our humanity eternally- Jesus Christ the Son of God, Son of man, and began reconcilling the world through sacrifical love and we're on that journey with Him. ... life.

And whither then? I cannot say

Words seem like broken cups that leak their meaning before I can complete the sentence. How to put the past weeks into words... I can only think in snapshots for now:

Lingira Island, the fishermen out on Lake Victoria with their floating lanterns in dark season with the late rising moon, it looked like hundreds of stars had fallen out of the sky and were burning on top of black glass, and the rich scent of drying fish still lingering on the rocks. One thing I've realized here is the sense of scent... America keeps things so sterile, grocery stores with everything sealed up in plastic... here aroma is everywhere, good and bad, but it makes life taste deeper. Running around the island (rock-hopping up the hills)... and talking to the beautiful people and playing with children.

Sipi Falls, meeting backpackers and fellow NGO workers, trading stories while eating a breakfast of bananas and coffees overlooking the valley and the 300ft waterfall. Hiking with our guide through the villages on an invisible trail and campfires on the side of the mountain.

Christmas, I think one of the best I've ever spent, worshiping God at church, then serving a feast to 20 widows and 50 children from the local community and having a program for them... their gratitude over the simplest things convicts me. Then, Shannon and I spent the rest of the day with Gerald's family at their home in the nearby village. (10 siblings and their mother, as well as some spouses and children.)

We've also been enjoying the fellowship of a team on their Discipleship Training School (DTS) outreach from the Swiss base (though I think only one is actually Swiss), and are expecting a team from Australia on Tuesday and in January two teams from the Tyler Texas base (home sweet home!)

I can hardly believe how quick time is passing here. Outreach begins in a month. We'll be spending some time in Pader, an internally-displaced persons camp. Then, four of us are going to South Africa where we'll be focusing more on urban development and community education/empowerment -- especially with street kids. We'll be spending some time in Cape Town, Jefferey's Bay, and Durban (which is Shan's hometown and working with her local church.) The rest of the team is heading to Sudan. I am really excited for them, and my adventurous side wishes to be trailing off with them into the intense and unknown but for now God seems to have another plan.

I recommend everyone read, What is the What- it is about the lost boys in Sudan. I can't come to grips with the intense violence and death these kids had to experience, but I think everyone needs to hear their story... if only because our hearts are often too calloused to learn from good examples but the atrocity of evil can cause us to repent and run from the same impulses in our own heart. We need to hear stories like this to be reminded of the value of every human life and how spoiled with God's blessings most of us are-- and to intercede. Because these are real lives. These are children who had to bury children, who watched rivers turn red with blood, these are innocent children and people who had to bear the evils of war and they might be your neighbor now. These refugees who turn into invisible people we ignore in our country, and yet, they have so much to teach us. (Jax and Kate, I am so proud to have two sisters who are serving refugees/immigrants in the US and listening to their stories.) Anyhow, read it, and let your heart break for these things.

God bless.

Life in Uganda

Red dust clinging to my shoes, and already so many images imprinted in my mind. It’s hard to know where to begin. Africa. It sounds so exotic, so mysterious, when you say it you can just see the ideas popping into people’s head. Not even a country, but the whole continent is boiled down into “Africa.” But here I am, and even this small town could fill a continent with words. America seems like a distant memory, or like life there is happening in the future.

“There is a poverty of soul in the suburban world that is almost too much to bear much of the time.” Yes. The truth of that statement was weighing on my shoulders before I arrived. Here being surrounded by people who have grown up in various countries in Africa, I sometimes feel a sudden stab of guilt at how easy my life has been. They call us (the white people)- “Muzungo”. The children shout it out gleefully, hoping for your attention, the shopkeepers greedily, hoping for your affluence. But it makes you aware, constantly, that you are different… that this continent has suffered a million tragic histories and joys and that your understanding at its deepest-- is shallow.

The generosity of the poor humbles me, makes me ache to find ways to express my heart. My roommate from Uganda woke up before me this morning and washed (-- scrubbed the red dirt from my white socks) because I’d left them soaking. They are so willing to serve, to trust God for provision as they share their food and money, to have the faith I often find difficult. Some moments I feel like I am just coming out of a deep sleep, shaking off the strangeness of individualism, of competition, of my own confinements & western socialization. I’ve spent too much time looking for friends of a certain demographic, being here with people who are not like me reveals so much in my heart… my gravitation towards those easiest to understand instead of struggling for love and communication. A few of the people here who are from "the West" have this mindset that we have something to teach, a subtle superiority… our glorious modernization… I want to shake that out of my system.

Each week I have two cooking duties—already the campfire like scent of the smoky kitchen with its ashy floor, piles of firewood (ie. trees), and half-wall windows is comforting. All the modernness of America proved no help in this kitchen. So, I am relegated to chopping watermelon and making salad after rolling out mostly square chapatti. But the Africans... singing and dancing, even in cooking they have rhythm and grace. I think when there's been as much hardship and suffering in a continent as there has been here, you learn to sing. You learn to sing as you work, sing as you celebrate, sing as you mourn. It's something quite beautiful. And they aren't judging me at all. The only thing that holds me back from their dance is the grasping fingers of my self -composure, of order... they don't care if I look like a fool, if I clap out of rhythm or sing out of tune... they don’t care at all, its me who cares. Intolerable I. But it’s so wonderfully invaded here.

Africa is teaching me to slow down. It is creeping into my soul, as my skin glares white among dark bodies, as the sun kindly turns me darker, as foreign words float around me with meanings waiting to be captured like butterflies in a net... as I let throw off the ways I've limited God.

As I sit outside the office I peer through a grove of trees, behind which the view of the cantina is crisscrossed with clotheslines flaunting their bright garments to the subdued rust-colored earth, the unruly grass that sprouts up like bed hair, and the muted blue sky. I am content here, not because trouble is removed, not because life is easier (at all) but because I am listening to our Dad, I am not thinking "am I growing" I am just conversing and responding-- becoming more and more alive. There is no other word for this feeling I can think of than being gloriously aware of being a living, breathing being. The breeze is cool and gentle.

Songs fill my life here. The music- more specifically the worship in any African tongue, I don’t know how to describe it, it flies into you like a flock of birds- inhabiting your hands and feet and stirring them to flight. You find the curtain of your lips drawn open into a sunbeam smile, and when you glance at others it’s like joy and light itself has been captured. The song itself is alive, like the heartbeat of Africa, and in moments you can forget everything in this simple, yet stunning harmonizing of voices and hands … and I think it’s a bit like Heaven must be or at least the nearest thing to freedom.