Blessed With Work

Yes, the unthinkable has occurred, I am a father. I’m close to 6 weeks into this new fatherhood thing and I’ll tell you, it’s not for the feint of heart. Not that it’s bad mind you, but it is a lot of work caring for someone who can do almost absolutely nothing for himself. But before I explore my experience of fatherhood here to fore, let me share Erika’s and my experience getting to this place starting Friday May 16, Erika’s last scheduled say at work before her maternity leave.

Bump, the name given to Orion by Erika’s mom before he was born because we wouldn’t reveal his name to anyone, was due Tuesday, May 20th, the day arbitrarily assigned by the Dr. based on the size of the baby in utero and the conception date estimation at the time of the early exams. This of course is not a schedule, and we were prepared for the baby to be late given this was Erika’s first. Friday after we left work (we work together) we got some dinner and went to see Prince Caspian. We figured it was the last movie we’d be able to see in the theater for a while. We were right. The next day, Saturday, Erika began having erratic contractions during our yard sale, and into the afternoon. I was scheduled to go see Phil Keaggy in concert in Joppa MD, and Erika’s parents and some friends of the family were coming over to play games at our place. I was planning on putting my concert plans on hold, but her contractions stopped, and she said I should go. So I went, but called every hour or so to see how she was doing. I got back around midnight and found her parents in our living room with her timing her contractions, which were about 10 to 15 minutes apart. We decided to try to sleep (as if she could sleep through contractions), and her parents stayed on our sleeper sofa. When the contractions got to about 5 minutes apart at around 6 in the morning we decided to call Erika’s doula and head to the hospital. We got there around 7, were escorted to our room, and began dealing in earnest with Erika’s contractions.

The hospital was amazing. I’m inserting heaps of praise here for the nurses and doctors at Calvert Memorial Hospital (although I could never figure out what the hospital was in memorial of, unless it was Lord Baltimore himself, but I digress). Heaps of praise should also be piled upon Cheryl, Erika’s doula who was an amazing coach for Erika. Erika wanted to try to have the baby all natural, no drugs or epidurals. She also wanted to be ambulatory while in labor, which means being free for long periods of time from the tethers of the fetal baby monitor. Because they baby was doing well, they allowed that freedom, tethering her only for brief stints every couple of hours. After a roller coaster ride of ups and downs in the delivery room the baby was birthed into the world at 4:43 PM on May 18th. Cheryl later commented that the time of birth made it seem like a normal day at the office. Erika’s mom and dad were in the room, and her mom actually cut the cord, because I couldn’t bring myself to do it. My Dad and his girlfriend, and my Mom and Step Dad were also in the hospital and we all celebrated by getting Italian food and eating it in the delivery room afterward, which in retrospect seems kind of creepy and weird, but it didn’t at the time, and neither Erika nor I had eaten all day and were famished. We settled down that night and had the best night of sleep that I suspect we’ll experience for the next couple of years.

That brings us to today, almost weeks into young Orion’s life, and close to 6 weeks into our endeavor into parenthood. It has been different from what I thought it would be. I was expecting something as trying as the Mali trip, but long term. I was expecting to have to confront my selfishness, impatience, and inflexibility, and I have had to confront them from time to time, but I’ve been surprised that my sense of dread was unjustified. After the initial shock of being responsible for this utterly defenseless child who can’t even control his own limbs wore off, I found myself enjoying him, and enjoying the role of watching him so Erika can get a extra 20 minutes of sleep, or reading to him, though he can’t understand or see the pictures, or providing him with a pacifier to disperse all of that sucking energy, or even changing diapers (though enjoy probably isn’t the right word for that). I could probably think of some great theological insights in all of this, but I think I’ll just leave the theological insight at that, the joy of fatherhood.

There’s a great line in the movie “Return to Me”, probably one of the sappiest chick flick movies ever created, but as unlikely as the story is, it is a movie grounded in a nice reality (largely influenced I think by the Catholicism of Bonnie Hunt, its writer/director, but I digress). The grandfather of our ingénue in the story is cleaning up at the restaurant he owns when the granddaughter offers to help. He refuses her help and tells her, “I’ve been blessed with work”. I kind of feel that way. Orion adds a lot of work into our lives, especially Erika’s at this point, but it’s a work I don’t seem to mind as much. To quote Erika, it is “pain with a purpose”. And so far, and I imagine it will be this way down the road, it’s been very much worth it.

The Face of the Earth

This will serve as a confirmation that I haven't fallen off the face of the Earth. I will be posting some reflections on here soon about becoming a father, which happened 5/18/08 when Orion Connor Fallin was born, which of course has taken up a lot of time and mental capacity. At any rate that will follow soon, and no I haven't abandoned my blog. Thanks for anyone's patience who reads any of these. I appreciate your interest. Stick with me and more will flow out soon.

Downside Upside Down

Most of what I’m posting here at this point has some relation to school, largely because it consumes so much of my thought and time. So what follows is another exercise in my speaking class. We were asked to give a 5 minute sermon from one of 5 passages of scripture. I chose Genesis 32 and 33, and focused squarely on Jacob’s wrestling with the angel/God, and was struck by something new, which is always nice.

In the telling of the story in Genesis Jacob leaves Haran and his Father-In-Law Laban to return to the land of his now deceased father Isaac, and his estranged brother Esau who he had cheated out of their father’s blessing some 15 to 20 years earlier. As he approaches from the east he seems to realize he has no place in this new/old land, and that he and his caravan of livestock, servants, and family, including at least 12 children with four different women were vulnerable, exposed and at his brother’s mercy. He is unsure of how he will be received by his brother, and when he learns that his brother is coming to meet him with a large, and by inference, well armed group of men he fears the worst. He fears the slaughter of his servants, and his family, and above all seems to fear his own death. In a move to dim what he perceives is his brother’s anger he sends a group of servants ahead with a portion of his flock as a gift to Esau from “your servant Jacob”. He then sends his family ahead, the two servants with whom he has children, Bilhah and Zilphah, then Leah, and her children, finally his beloved Rachael, and her son Joseph. He watches them ford the River Jabbok, and fade into the distance, and he is left there alone, dreading the dawn of the next day. The only thing separating Jacob now from his trouble is the River Jabbok.

That evening as he was alone with his thoughts, perhaps crying out to God for the safety of his family, he is blindsided by the force of something knocking him to the ground. This wasn’t an animal, and it was clear from the arms wrapped around him that this wasn’t Esau. This was a stranger attacking him; someone Jacob neither recognized nor knew. They fought, and wrestled for hours, in and out of the river, sweaty, muddy, and panting. Sometimes they found themselves just holding each other, waiting for the other to make the next move. That’s when it happens. This stranger comes down on Jacob’s hip with a force that made Jacob believe he could have done it at any time. Jacob has a new problem now; he is fighting for his life, clinging to this stranger. As morning approaches the stranger demands that Jacob let him go, but Jacob, who is in no position to make demands, demands that this man bless him. Perhaps Jacob was afraid that this man would finish him off if he let him go, or perhaps this is the same Jacob that seemed to want everyone’s blessing. In this exchange however, Jacob is given a new name, Israel, and the man’s blessing before he disappears into the morning. And Jacob is left again alone, now broken, and still in trouble.

I believe this can be classified as very strange encounter, one for which I imagine most of us have no template. It is however an encounter through which Jacob gained a strange knowledge of God. It was a knowledge that isn’t available through study or books. It isn’t available through story, or family. It is only available through struggle. Jacob wrestled, grappled, and struggled with this man, who we are left to assume from the text, is the Divine taking on human form, and is simultaneously blessed and injured. If Jacob had not encountered this man it is plausible to suggest he would not have been injured in this way, but neither would he have been blessed. It seems that neither would have been experienced apart from the other, or apart from this struggle and violence.

O’Connor in her collection of essays and speeches Mystery and Manners speaking of the characters in her stories suggests, “I have found that violence is strangely capable of returning my characters to reality and preparing them to accept their moment of grace. Their heads are so hard that almost nothing else will do the work. This idea, that reality is something to which we must be returned at considerable cost… is one that is implicit in the Christian view of the world.” This reality to which a character, or person must be returned can be seen as the strange knowledge that Jacob came to through his struggle. He came to a clear view of the reality of the fierce, free God of mercy. This knowledge was gained through struggle, breaking and blessing. In the moment of his breaking, Jacob is stripped of any notion of self sufficiency or pride, and is left to cling to this man, dependant on the grace of his blessing to keep his life, realizing he was unable to secure that life himself. The blessing he finally received was received at a great cost to Jacob. In light of O’Connor’s notion that violence, suffering, and struggle sometimes prepares us for our moment of grace, it seems the price of that blessing may have been determined by the amount of pride and self sufficiency that had to be overcome in Jacob before he allowed himself to experience the safe arms of grace and mercy.

In Frederick Buechner’s book Son of Laughter, from which this sermon/blog liberally borrowed as I laid out the storyline above, he describes Jacob’s experience of the blessing.

“I do not remember the words of his blessing or even if there were words. I remember the blessing of his arms holding me and the blessing of his arms letting me go. I remember as blessing the black shape of him against the rose colored sky. I remember as blessing the one glimpse I had of his face. I was more terrible than the face of dark, or of pain, or of terror. It was the face of light. No words can tell of it. Silence cannot tell of it. Sometimes I cannot believe that I saw it and lived but that I only dreamed I saw it. Sometimes I believed I saw it and that I only dream I live.”

In the end Jacob’s experience of grace, and by extension perhaps at times our experience of grace, came across to him as violence. This was a violence not bound up in some Divine malevolence, or a Divine desire to either discipline or correct Jacob, rather it seems that Jacob experienced God’s attempt to overcome his independent, self sufficient, self important pride as violence because that is what pride inherently is, violent. It is a supplanting of God in favor of the self. It flips reality on its head attempting to place the created ontologically above the creator. Any attempt to correct this then will have to travel through that barrier of violent pride in order to find itself again on the side of dependant obedience and faith. Our trip to pride is experienced as violence by God, and God’s effort to correct that and flip reality right side up if you will may be experienced as violence by the one who is being returned to reality. This is why even in this violence suffered by Jacob, one can view God as gentle and merciful, applying only the pressure or force necessary to attempt to turn Jacob’s world right side up.

I have often heard people describe their experience of God as God tearing their world apart, or turning it upside down. From our perspective that’s exactly what’s happening, because from our perspective as those who are upside down in our world of pride and self sufficiency, the experience of having our world rearranged by or around God feels like being turned upside down, when in fact we’re being turned right side up. A few years ago I went to see Peter Gabriel in concert, it was wonderful, and as is his tendency, very theatrical. When he performed his song Downside Up he and his daughter who was singing backup literally were latched into the superstructure of the stage and performed a good portion of the song literally upside down. Of course if they stayed there long enough that upside down perspective would come to look normal and right side up. In reality as creatures of pride and hubris that is our perspective that God attempts to right through grace.

It is important to note in this construct of the violence of God’s grace, this isn’t God forcing humanity to accept grace, but is God attempting through grace to create circumstances in which a person can come to grace on grace’s terms, empty handed and full of need. When one believes one has sufficient reserves, and an inherent ability to navigate their troubles themselves, they don’t perceive their need of God, they don’t have a proper view of their upside down horizon. Sometimes in order for us to fall on the mercy and grace of God our horizon needs to be turned upside down so we see the world as it really is. Unfortunately we have the freedom, and the inclination to return to our upside down perspective, which God allows. Thus the struggle begins all over again, with God turning our world upside down again, and again out of love and in mercy, and by grace so that like Jacob we can participate in the blessings of God, even as simultaneously beautiful and terrible as they may appear.

The image above is taken from:
http://www.papabear.com/pgsum04favgraphics/milandowns.jpg

Palm Sunday Belated

Here is a story I had to write, and subsequently tell/embody for a class. I kind of like the shape of it. It's very short, but I thought I'd share it:



So Jesus and his disciples were on their way to Jerusalem to celebrate the Passover. They had lived together, traveled together, eaten meals, told jokes, exorcized spirits together. They had seen the best and worst in each other, and had grown into a tight knit group of friends. After three years they were family. And now they were to celebrate Passover together in Jerusalem as a family.

Given Jesus’ growing notoriety, or notoriousness, depending on your perspective, the larger Jerusalem grew on the horizon, the larger the crowds were that were traveling with them. Evidently word of Jesus’ teaching, healing, and love for the fatherless, the widow, the lepers, tax collectors and really anyone who crossed his path had reached the ears of many because they came out to meet him with an expectation that felt to his disciples like electricity in the air.

Jesus had told two of his disciples to go ahead into a village on the outskirts of Jerusalem to find a colt that had been tied up, which no one had ever ridden, to untie it and bring it to him. He said if anyone asks you why you’re doing this, simply tell them The Lord needs it and will send it back shortly. When they returned with the colt they spread their cloaks on it. Jesus sat on the colt and as they came upon the outskirts of Jerusalem the crowds which had continued growing larger and larger through the past several villages began laying palms on the ground in front of the Colt singing, HOSANNA, BLESSED IS HE WHO COMES IN THE NAME OF THE LORD, BLESSED IS THE COMING KINGDOM OF OUR FATHER DAVID, HOSANNA IN THE HIGHEST.

In this spontaneous upwelling of community adoration the disciples began to believe that these crowds were seeing the Jesus they had lived with, the one Peter had confessed as the Messiah. They had great expectations for the week ahead, and Jesus seemed to embrace their expectations rebuking a group Pharisees who were livid because of the crowd’s open declaration, reserved for Kings of Israel, telling them if the crowds kept silent the stones themselves would cry out. This was an amazing time to be one so close to Jesus.

What the disciples didn’t see was that they hadn’t embraced Jesus’ expectations. To their shock and horror they would find it would be Jesus' expectations, and his adoration and obedience to the Father that would shape the coming week and indeed each of their lives in ways they weren’t presently able to conceive of or imagine.

We Have Seen His Glory

“The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the One and Only, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth” (John 1.14 NIV)

This verse has been rolling around in my head for a few months now as I consider the incarnation. The reflection that follows was born during my trip to Mali. The six of us who were part of the team took turns preparing daily devotions, and the seed of this reflection was the devotion I shared while we were there.

John’s introduction of Jesus in his Gospel as the Divine Logos is full of rich imagery and metaphor waiting to be mined by the of believers and theologians who would attempt to grapple with John’s words in the centuries that would follow. The notion of that Divine Logos not just taking on flesh, but becoming flesh and living with and among humanity has spawned hundreds of thousands of pages of thoughts, insights and reflections. So what follows here is nothing new, just some of my insights and reflections as I work through some of these ideas, and what they mean for my life, which may speak to where others are in their lives as well.

In reading this verse I’ve always tended to focus on the tangible, that is The Word, Jesus Christ, becoming flesh and living, full of humanity here in our beautiful mess. This is the incarnation, the Divine becoming flesh and living with us, speaking in and through flesh what had already been communicated through the prophets, which is the heart of the God who, “led them with cords of human kindness, with ties of love”, and who, “lifted the yoke from their neck and bent down to feed them” (Hosea 11.4 NIV). This image of the transcendent, creative God of the universe choosing to be limited to the confines of physicality as a means of sharing God’s love for and esteem of humanity provokes and humbles me, and I believe opens a window into the very nature and character of God. It moves me past the first sentence of the verse to the second.

John goes on to say that in this movement of love from transcendence to immanence, from spirit to flesh, from “light” to “darkness” we have seen God’s glory. In my own life when I’ve thought of glory, I’ve tended to default to the image aroused in my head by the second verse of the Christmas carol, “Silent Night”:

Silent night, holy night!

Shepherds quake at the sight

Glories stream from heaven afar

Heavenly hosts sing Alleluia!

I picture light streaming from heaven to Earth, as if breaking through a cloudy day, shining a light into darkness. Assuming that Jesus wasn’t actually physically beaming light, glowing as it were like Moses coming down from Sinai while on Earth, I think we’ll have to assume that our beholding of God’s glory through the incarnation must mean something different. (Although the last verse of “Silent Night” does have the newborn Christ emitting “radiant beams” from his face, but we’ll chalk that up to artistic license).

I believe John may clarify the form of this glory later in his Gospel as he shares his account of Jesus’ prayers in the Garden of Gethsemene in chapter 17. Jesus begins by praying for the 12, and the approaching storm they would have to navigate. He then goes on to pray not only for them, but, “also for those who will believe in me through their message” (17.20). He prays for the unity among these believers, and their inclusion into the inner relations of the Godhead (a notion by itself deserving of hundreds of thousands of pages of reflection), linking the world’s recognition of the authenticity of Jesus’ actions, and authority of his teaching directly to this unity. He then drops a bomb that completely unravels my “Silent Night” notion of glory. Jesus prays, “I have given them the glory that you gave me, that they may be one as we are one” (17.22 NIV). He goes on to say, “Father, I want those you have given me to be with me where I am, and to see my glory, the glory you have given me because you loved me before the creation of the world” (17.24 NIV). John says that humanity has seen the glory of God embodied in Jesus’ humanity; he then shares Jesus’ statement that he has given those who have believed in him the glory the Father had given him. If we follow this, then “the glory of the One and Only, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth” is given to us as those who have trusted in Jesus as the Christ. It seems that this glory is part of the incarnation, and a part that we can and are intended to participate in. What is this glory then, if not streams of light shining from God?

Hans Urs Von Balthasar would contend that there is a connection between the notion of glory and beauty, although I’ve heard many mainline protestants and evangelicals make that connection as well. The most notable that I’m familiar with would be Karl Barth, and John Piper. Thinking in this vein the glory of God could be equated with the beauty or attractiveness of God. Moving quickly and loosely here, then, John can speak of seeing the glory or beauty of God among us because that beauty is wrapped up in the grace of the self giving love of God, embodied in that movement from heaven to earth, from transcendence to immanence, and from “light” to “darkness”. God was, is and will always be love, but that love was communicated at a new and unique depth in the incarnation, in the Divine’s participation in our finiteness. This is the form of glory or beauty at the intersection of the Divine and the human. This grace and love is inherently striking, drawing and transporting us, perhaps even involuntarily to God, overwhelmed by God’s attractiveness, and possibly not able to articulate why. I think there may be a corollary here between our experience of the attractiveness of God and our experience of exceptional earthly beauty. Some would even argue that there is no separation between the two. There are times that we’re overwhelmed by something in a painting, or in a song, or a movie, or even a sunset or a mountain. We see and are struck by what we’ve encountered and are filled with what I can only describe as joy. I believe that the grace and love of God work in a similar fashion, in that they overwhelm our senses, fill us with joy, and therefore create a desire for the object that is the source of that joy, namely God.

So then if one grants the notion that graceful, self giving love is the form of Divine glory and beauty, then there is a sense in which Jesus’ gift of glory to us is our participation in this form. In other words our participation in and emulation of that graceful, self giving love of God is us as believers sharing in the glory and beauty of God. As we imitate God’s actions in this manner, interacting with those around us, we recreate the attractiveness of God, and so participate in God’s glory. This participation then is also how the beauty of God becomes real in the lives of those around us. In the same way the love of God was embodied in Christ in the incarnation, it is embodied in us as we imitate the self giving love of God in our incarnation. In this understanding when a person imitates this love they take on the form of Divine glory, embody the attractiveness of God, and so become a conduit for the worship of God in that God is the only true source of this attractiveness and beauty, therefore the Divine, namely Christ, is at the heart of both the action of the one loving and the worship of the one recognizing the source of the action. Therefore when a person gracefully loves they witness to and argue through their action for the preeminent glory and beauty of God.

“We have seen his glory, the glory of the One and Only, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth.” We see it not only in the life of Christ, but also when we imitate the graceful loving actions of our Saviour. As we emulate these actions, we too embody the attractiveness and beauty of God and participate in the glory given to Christ by the Father. As I attempt to continue to understand these relationships I stand in perpetual amazement, simultaneously filled with awe and joy as I stand witness to the beauty of the grace lavished by God through the love and mercy found in Jesus Christ.

Reflections on Mali

Disclaimer: What follows may come across as an overwrought, “what I did on my summer vacation”. If it does I apologize. To be honest I think I’m still working through a lot of what I saw and experienced in Mali, and I suppose I will be for a while. But it’s been a few weeks since I returned, so I can at least share some of my ruminations thus far, for better or for worse. Let me just say first that my trip to Mali was literally the most difficult thing I’ve ever done. I didn’t expect this to be the case, which probably contributed to the difficult time I had. I had expected to be challenged, but I expected I’d be the strong one helping everyone else on our team. The reality was quite the opposite. But I’m jumping ahead; let me share what we were doing in Mali to begin with.

Around 2 years ago a member of our congregation, Jason Beach, volunteered for the Peace Corps, and was assigned to the country of Mali in West Africa. He was designated a water/sanitation volunteer and assigned to the rural village of Koumantou, the capital of its commune, the equivalent of a county in the U.S. Upon learning of Jason’s endeavors, one of the pastors of our church, Jay McKinley, proposed the possibility of leading a team from our church to help Jason with a project. Our project took shape from there. Jason’s major project in Koumantou was the creation of soak pits that keep standing water underground, thus preventing mosquitoes from using it to breed. The problem of standing water also arose from a drainage ditch that drained water from the town to a large wash containing rice fields. It had existed as a ditch around 3 feet deep, and around 3 feet wide, but had filled in over the years so that much of it was just flat ground. In the rainy season the water that would have been collected by the ditch flooded the homes and businesses along the road. When the rain let up, water would collect in the uneven places as well. This is the project Jason proposed to Jay, and that we eventually tackled.

There were 5 of us who left the church January 20th for Dulles Airport, Pastor Jay McKinley, Joel Wagner, Mitch LeFevre, Christian Hanley, and me. It felt to me like we were leaving for an adventure. I felt very sure of myself, apprehensive because I hate flying, but anticipating an amazing experience. We had been meeting once every other week or so for around 3 months preparing ourselves for this. We boarded the plane around 10 and landed in Paris about 6 ½ hours later. We then boarded our flight for Bamako, the capital of Mali, and landed there around 5 ½ hours later. Everything had been perfect thus far. I was pretty tired, I don’t sleep on planes, but that was expected. The experience at the airport was far easier than I expected. Customs was easy, retrieving our trunks was easy, and finding Jason outside of the airport was easy. We even found two cabs quickly and easily. We were planning on staying the night in Bamako at Avant Ministries, a facility that houses different ministry and missions personnel on a short term basis. On the way to the mission house we encountered a football mob. The Africa Cup was just beginning when we arrived, and Mali had won its first game, and everyone was ecstatic, so much so a group stopped our cabs opened our doors and tried to take our hats. We found out later that Jason, who had been in Mali 16 months, was pretty freaked out. At any rate I really wasn’t perhaps because I didn’t know enough to know to be afraid. Ignorance I suppose was bliss. I slept wonderfully at Avant, under my first mosquito net.

The next morning we left for Koumantou. We rented a small van outside of the mission compound which took us to the bus station. Jason purchased our tickets in our Malian names, which he had given us in the states. I was Solo Dumbia. We also had Alou Sangare, Salif Keita, a Coulabale, and a Kone’. The Malians got a kick out of the white guys boarding the bus when the names were read. Koumantou is about a 4 to 5 hour bus ride from Bamako. The Bus ride was uneventful. We left around 8, and the morning was cool, so the bus ride was very comfortable, aside from the seats.

We arrived in Koumantou around noon, and were immediately greeted by the mayor as we stepped off the bus. People from the town grabbed our trunks and bags, and we were ushered to a welcoming ceremony outside of the mayor’s offices. There was a crowd of around 200. There were drummers, and singers, a small sound system, and chairs set aside for us. We were greeted by the mayor, the adjunct mayor, the local imam, and Pastor Chaka from Jason’s Malian church. They were all very welcoming, and friendly, and full of blessings for us, which is a part of the culture. As a drummer I loved watching what they were doing with the drums, in essence as a drum chorus. Three drummers playing 3 very different, but relatively simple drum lines created these amazing beats that I’d been trying to recreate with one djembe, no wonder it never sounded exactly right to me.

From there we were escorted through very dusty, trash strewn streets or alleys to the concession that would be our home for the next two weeks. We each chose a circular mud brick hut to stay in. They had concrete floors and walls, and a thatch roof. They were actually pretty nice. I had seen them in pictures, but sitting there on my trunk in my hut was a very different experience. As I set up my tent, which we were using as portable mosquito nets, kids watched me from the outside, and I started to feel very foreign, and far away, and alone. After all of the wonderful experiences traveling to Koumantou, now that I was there I realized I couldn’t leave, and would be there for 2 weeks, half of a month.

That night I couldn’t get comfortable in the cots we brought, and ended up unsuccessfully trying to sleep in the concrete floor. I understood Rich Mullins difficulty with the dark in a new way. He sang in Hold Me Jesus that he woke up in the night and felt the dark, and in Hard to Get he asks Jesus if he could remember just how long a night could get. I just couldn’t relax, and I couldn’t get the comforts of home out of my head. I realized just how much I depend on the technology around me to numb me to myself. At home if I can’t sleep, I’d get up and watch some TV, or play a video game until I was sufficiently tired. Here I was alone with my own thoughts, fears, pains, and history, with no way to take the edge off the voices that were screaming at me. The next night was the same thing. In three days and two nights I had only gotten about 3 hours of sleep, and I wasn’t able to sleep in the day either for fear that I’d be up all night. What was even more frustrating is that I had taken sleep aids which didn’t put me to sleep. We had arrived in Koumantou on Tuesday. By Wednesday I was fraying emotionally. By Thursday, the beginning of our ditch digging project I was putting on a brave face, or at least trying to, but I was a tumult of anxiousness and fear underneath. The days were fine, but I was terrified of the night, and the hours of being alone with myself and failing to sleep.

An hour into the ditch digging project I had to hurry back to our concession because of an urgent need, only to find our contraption brought for those needs, called a luggable loo, basically a bucket with a toilet seat attached, locked in a hut. With the “need” being as urgent as it was, I was quickly acquainted with the nyegan, basically a whole in the ground with a type of concrete floor. Given I was already unraveling emotionally this pretty much sent me over the edge, and I spent the rest of the morning lying on the floor of my hut, obsessing over the comforts of home.

The next day I lost my breakfast before heading to the work sight, but made it through the morning. I didn’t eat lunch, yet when we went back to the work site I threw up all the water I had been drinking. Jay walked me back and on the way back we talked about the possibility of my early return to Maryland. I didn’t think I could take another week of this. When the team returned from the work sight they met with me and really encouraged me and suggested I would regret leaving early, and that I should at least wait until Sunday. It was the team showing me the grace of God, and I agreed to at least stick it out until then. It ended up being exactly what I needed, the possibility of leaving, and a deadline. It was the spotter in weight lifting in essence saying, “OK, 2 more reps”. I was still sick on Saturday, but began to eat MRE’s in the evenings, so as to get some calories in me. I had moved into Jay’s hut to sleep the night before and had begun to actually sleep. The next day Sunday would be the day everything turned around for me.

Sunday we slept in, got ready and went to Jason’s church, The Evangelical Protestant Church of Koumantou. It was a small concrete building, with a cross on the outside, and arched steel windows that propped open for ventilation. We were escorted to the front of the church and seated on the platform, which in and of itself was very humbling. Christian stayed back because he began to feel sick the night before. The service started with music, which consisted of 2 drummers and the people’s voices. The people brought their own hymnals, or knew the music. Many of the songs were translated English songs and I recognized the tunes. When they sang Leaning on the Everlasting Arms in their own language I recognized the tune and was able to sing along. I was overwhelmed by the beauty of singing this song in English with these believers singing the same song in Bambera. In addition I was overwhelmed by the idea in the song. Up to that point I had been so focused on my discomfort, and my problems that I wasn’t able to conceive of God’s presence there, and so I was trying to muddle through, pushing through on my own brute strength. I was moved by the love and gentleness of God who can keep me “safe and secure from all alarms” and on whose everlasting arms I could always lean. It was familiar, yet new. It was God speaking to me through my language, music. We were asked to do one of our songs, so Jason retrieved his guitar, I borrowed the djembe and the rest of the guys sang Open the Eyes of My Heart. It was wonderful to be able to play drums, it felt familiar and it enabled me to focus even more. Later Jay’s message on John 13, speaking of washing each other’s feet, and serving one another again reminded me of why I was there, to attempt to embody that self giving love of God. The church service was one of the most amazing experiences of my life. It was the first time I had sensed God’s presence in Africa, and I never felt that absence of that presence again while I was there.

Monday we returned to work on the ditch, and while it wasn’t easy, in fact the work was extraordinarily difficult; I had emotionally turned a corner and was able to at least try to focus on something other than myself, namely the project, the Malians, and the team. I had greatly over estimated my conditioning and stamina. I don’t remember having this much difficulty with manual labor at 25, let alone 30, but I worked as I could, which was less than Joel and Mitch, whose stamina and positivity made huge impressions on me, and far less than the Malians who were artists with a pick axe, and whose stamina was reminiscent of Olympic distance runners.

The second week moved far more quickly than the first. We had settled into the routine of getting up at 6:30, having breakfast at 7, working from 8-12, having lunch from 12-2, going back to work from 2-4, coming back, showering and spending time with visitors from 4-7, eating dinner sometime after 7, and going to bed by around 9:30. I finally had a rhythm. I still struggled, with lack of stamina, with heat, with the food, with the dust and smoke, with my own expectations, but because of the support of the team, and Jay’s kindness in allowing me sleep in his hut, and the sense of the presence of God, and Jason’s generosity in allowing us to play his guitar in the evenings (which was huge in giving me a sense of familiarity and a connection to my second language) I was able to begin to do more than muddle through.

I never enjoyed myself the way that Jay did. Mali seemed like a second home to him, as if he were visiting old friends and family at a church homecoming. I never enjoyed myself as much as Joel who seemed the entire time like a fish in his own pond, always smiling, always ready for the next experience. In my sickness I was never as positive as Christian was in his. I obsessed over the things from home I lacked. Christian made a list of them so as to rob them of their power. I never engaged the people with Mitch’s fervor, attempting to speak their language from day one. I never had Jason Beach’s confidence and grace. While at first I envied them of these things, I’ve come to realize I was on my own journey. It was with them, involved them, and was shaped by them and all they brought to our team. My journey wasn’t about excelling, though I would have liked it to be. My journey I think was about learning to fail.

Before we left for Mali, Jason had said that he believed the trip would be a success if we just showed up. While it was nice to accomplish as a team the completion of our ditch digging project, which was completed at sundown on our last day of work, my journey wasn’t about any accomplishments. It was about the freedom to “fail”, the freedom to fall short of my own inflated self-expectations. It highlighted to me the importance of embodying the love of God. When I made the decision to go to Mali after Jay had called and invited me along all those months ago, I saw it as an opportunity to give hands and feet to the big ideas that had been swimming around in my head. I saw it as my opportunity to go “Into the Dark with God”. What I wasn’t prepared for was how truly dark the darkness was. What is funny is that I believed the darkness I would be traveling with God into was Mali, that serving this community of mostly Muslims and a few Christians would allow me to live out Christ’s incarnation, traveling from heaven to earth so to speak. I was surprised to find that I was the darkness through which I would travel with God.

Before I left I don’t think I had sensed the pride and hubris of my thoughts. The notion of living out Christ’s incarnation, while I believe theologically sound, still smacked of my own self importance, and that nagging belief that I try so hard to shake, that I am in some way superior to those around me. My journey was about attempting to move out from that, at least in practice, and focus on the other, whether that is the Malian, or those on my team. In doing so the movement begins in emulating the self giving love of God. So my failure to meet my own high expectations of myself, and my failure to live up to my high opinion of myself actually allowed me to be the love of God with my presence, in spite of myself, as opposed to believing myself to be the love of God. To play with James’ notion, in short thinking without action is dead. In the end I think my journey was only a step, but a step I needed to take.

Out of Africa

It’s been awhile since I posted, and I’ll have a bigger post soon. I just returned from the country of Mali in West Africa after a 2 week trip. It was probably the most difficult thing I’ve ever done. I’ll write more on the experience in my next post after I’ve processed it a bit more. But here are some pictures Christian Hanley took, he’s the one on the right, while on the trip.