Why I Read, Write and Listen

I went to a high school in a small town just northwest of Boston, Massachusetts. My teachers were edgy, dedicated and smart. I look back so fondly on them. Many were young, wide-eyed and ready to do their part. Among this clan, was my English teacher, Ms. Baldwin. Every word she said was smart and perfect. She went to Swarthmore for undergrad and was dating a tall and dark Harvard academe. She also wore these purple scarves a lot, and sometimes at the lunch table we’d talk about providing her with some accessorizing support but then again what did we know? We were fourteen year old girls. And besides, she liked her purple scarves, and probably wasn’t afraid to.

Ms. Baldwin lifted words off the page for me. The really wooden English terminology like “plot-line” and “past participles” that we poured over in eighth grade didn’t matter in Ms. Baldwin’s class. Now, the ideas mattered so when we read, everything was on the table. Discussions were rich and made me feel alive. In grammar-land, the ellipsis, or the “dot dot dot” is frowned upon when overused (I’m guilty, it’s so handy!). The ellipses clarifies nothing and points to an insufficiency. For precise people, this is annoying. But, in Ms. Baldwin’s class, we talked about the gaps and possibilities. We weren’t trying to pin as much down as we were trying to acknowledge the ellipses. I gave myself up to it.

Suffice it to say, I still cringe when I remember the way Ms. Baldwin spoke into my sweet little ego one ninth grade afternoon. We got our papers back on Mondays, and she had returned mine, with a “See Me.” See me? I thought. I had worked so long and hard on this paper! And I think, in the midst, of shedding new light on the “Raisin in the Sun” metaphor I may have found the answer to world peace. I knew Ms. Baldwin was tough but so was I. I wanted an A, not a “See Me.”

I walked up to her. “Hi,” I said.  Ms. Baldwin went right in: “So, you have this thing with words, Sarah,” she said, setting her coffee cup down. I felt so embarrassed. She kept going. “You have really great ideas, but why don’t you just write what you know…you know? Say what you mean. Be direct.” After a bit of conversation, some humbling instruction and a gracious second chance, I walked away from Ms. Baldwin’s desk dejected because I knew she was right. I had work to do if I wanted to be any good, and for better or for worse, I desperately did.

Still today, I have this obsession with words. I like to make things pretty and cozy with excessive adjectives. I love how Jane Austen uses words like “felicity” and “undulating.” They are beautiful and I just want to use them too. However, I respected Ms. Baldwin and tried to follow her lead. I tried to mean what I wrote even if it wasn’t poetic. In college, I became swept up in the postmodernism of Virginia Woolf and James Joyce. It was all very enlightening and most of the time left me asking totally pointless questions like, “What are the limits of language?” “What is form?” “What’s in a word?” As an English major I wrote these heavy theoretical papers intrigued by the greater meanings of language and culture. I asked a lot of questions and got to read a lot of books. I sat in our large and stone collegiate library and sipped tea. I miss all of it: the tea, the library and the books.

Now, I’m on my way to being a full time therapist and still, I’m a word junkie. But, I’m also learning words are not always the point. What about un-wording? What about silence? What about the fact that some rich and unsearchable things are actually lessened by language. If I were to write another paper, I would write it about un-wording and I would write about how stories of suffering make us silent. It’s a paper that might not have a lot of words, but it would move you to tears.

My work as a therapist is a lot like the small scope of work I’ve done as a reader except infinitely more real.  There are gaps to fill in, ideas to flesh out and possibilities to name. But this time around, the gaps and unspoken truths are not in between humorous characters or dialects. The gaps are human ones: raw and fleshy. True and sorry.  They leave me perplexed, longing for justification and careful analysis.  “Now what did this seven year old do to get treated like that?” I suppose I could look to the research on victimization or generational poverty to give reason to something that has none. And in fact, I do. I do try and add things up. I do try and understand more. But, when I’m in the moment and in my office, watching a small mouth speak words heavier than freight train, I must rely on the grace of silence. There are truly no words.

But  it is hard, when the inclination is to speak into things. The richest passages of my books are annotated several times over. I want to make more of them. And so I’m asking: Is it okay to want to make more of someone else’s story?  To annotate someone else’s life?  And perhaps most importantly: Where is the line? 

I don’t know. I also don’t really know what human margins look like other than knowing they are private and precious. Any scribble room I have is nothing short of an honor.

This year, I am learning that I do not need to holler into emptiness just so I get an echo. I do not need to make music or chatter to fill the room even when everything feels too vulnerable to be useful. Usefulness is not the point. The point is loving presence. The point, like it was in Ms. Baldwin’s class is the gap- the fact that it’s full of potential and lacking precision. And I need stamina more than words. Dear God, I need stamina. To bear this kind of mystery. To bear this kind of silence.

Falling

Fall in Texas is this catch-22 for me. On the one hand, I’m thankful to have (finally) stopped sweating. On the other hand, it’s still 80+ degrees; tweed jackets and boots necessitate the AC (what’s the point, folks? let’s keep wearing shorts), and besides that, the light is all weird. Has anyone ever noticed that? In Waco, the dusky light foreshadows October, but then I step outside and it’s steamy. With a sigh of disappointment, I try for gratitude acknowledging at least it’s not July.

Still, being the sap for setting, place and nostalgia that I am, when I remember my leafy Massachusetts hometown my heart skips a beat. Autumn was a peaceful and still sanctuary, even though the foliage was ablaze and the colors ran wild. My mom, with her beautiful knack for ritual and celebration, made a tradition of leaf-walks. Together, we would go in the woods behind my house and crunch through the leaves the maples had let go. We would hold hands and hum songs, and in between, I’d tell my mom all my secrets.  The crunching and the humming just made me spill. It was all sort of magical. I would ask her what her favorite color leaf was, and without fail, she would say, “yellow like the sun,” and I would say, “I like the orange because it’s a mix.”

On top of the trees, and the leaf-walks, and the leaf-piles that dotted our yard, there was the hustle of the season. Autumn is a season of intention, purpose and energy. For better or for worse, this is my stuff of life, so I welcomed their seasonal arrival even as a young child. The lazy days of summer are over! I get to go to school! And meet more people! And do more things! And work hard! It’s true and a little pathetic. My own neurotic harvesting, if you will.

But now, as a grown-up, beginning my fourth year away from my bright and dear East Coast Autumns, I am thinking about the way the falling leaves and the rising harvest-time shape the season. The beauty of the trees is also their downfall. Come December, the maples are skeletal and scrawny, and the leaves, glorious just a week ago, are gone. Thanksgiving is over. We have planned and gathered. We have prepared and stored. We have begun new routines and they have quickly become dull. Now, the light has gone away and the frost has come. There is a natural lull and winter covers things. And in Northern New England, that covering is for, well, a long time. We have no choice but to release the things that we had worked so hard to maintain and just settle in—we don’t hold our breath.

So I think about these things as I am carving out my corner of the world. I think about the losses that I must endure, and continue to endure so I can mature in the way I seek my God and find myself and engage creatively with others. Letting go has something to do with release and release has something to do with freedom and freedom, for us small human beings in this great big world, must include a bit of surrender.  So, might we live life with the passion and all the rich color of Autumn herself, but might we let it go as easily and as naturally as she does? Might we give in and surrender the attachments that keep us from running wild and ablaze? Might we let go of things that make us run ragged well past harvest time? Let us be alive! And when winter comes, let us be alive still.

I’m not sure how well I ease in and out, or up and down or over and under life’s transitions. It’s painful, to let go of the people, dreams and notions that we harvested. But, it’s necessary. Let’s face it: no one wants to welcome a seven month freeze, but you know what? To do otherwise would be to ignore what’s there, and delusion, when caked on too thickly over the years makes us crusty, hard-headed and quite….stuck.

One thing I know: Loss is hard, but when we give, just a bit, it begets wisdom, just like the changing season begets the budding crocus or the burnt leaf or the first snowfall. We are thankful that grace, once again, has arrived unanticipated, against all odds and all at once. And all the sudden we are down on our knees again, knowing that life is good and life is fleeting. And we let life in.

These Four Walls

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Recently, my roommate and I moved to a new residence. There’s nothing quite like a new nest and also nothing quite like moving in Central Texas heat at the end of June. It was a scorcher, but the day had an end and the new apartment was ours, so we did what we could to keep lifting the boxes. At the end of the day we sat on a hardwood floor, slurped some Popsicles and drank white wine like water. We drank and dreamed and talked about important things, but I’d like to think that the fluidity of that hour or two- the swish-swash of cooling off and settling in as best we could was the most important thing of all.

It seems that most people, including myself, make big deals of homecomings and housewarmings.  In part, I believe homemaking is a kind of christening. A new belonging. Gladly, I break such sacredness into the humdrum because it’s graceful to name the ways in which we belong. After all, good belonging, sounds and feels a lot like beloved- and really, what else is there? If I can say I’ve belonged to one or two or three beloveds and they’ve belonged to me, I think I would feel quite complete.

So this has got me to thinking: when we talk about homecoming, I want to already be home. If the process really is sacred like I’m saying it is, I just shouldn’t rush it, by I do. I find myself scheming how it is I might nest all at once. It makes me feel manic, and is definitely hard to live with. Indeed, such compulsion isn’t very cozy, but it happens. Especially to me. Especially when I have to wait. And sometimes, I think all good paintings, novels, songs…soul-food really is about the angst-old question of human-hood: “Could this be home?” The redemptive part that keeps us reading and listening and looking translates to: “Well, let’s make it home for now.”

I don’t know if this angst is good or bad or healthy or unhealthy. Maybe it’s just plain dramatic. Drama queen or not, I feel almost home-ness a lot, and the feeling is pretty real. I know that’ s sort of a paper-thin response. Elusiveness helps me to hold things more lightly. So, at the end of the day, I can throw up my hands, and say things, like “it is what it is.” And at the end of the day, this is what it is: my friend, settling in just as best as we can and me: cross-legged, delirious and thankful for sweet Popsicles and sweeter wine.

>Today it is Easter.

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It has been a whole month of springtime since I last blogged. Easter has come and gone, and it was a beautiful one. Easter is, of course, always beautiful.  This year’s particular beauty may very well have tumbled out of my pressing necessity for rebirth.  And when a necessity like this is quenched, grateful doesn’t cut it.
While Easter’s calendar date is off of our world’s radar for the time being, I’d like to write about it because I continue to feel it.  And yes, I know that as Christians, Easter really is the whole point of, well, everything, so resurrection is something we should practice everyday, like Wendell Berry says.  I know I’ve spoken about this before. Usually it’s community or prayer or bits of Scripture, perfect simplicity,  sweet melodies or laughter that make the sanctity of this Resurrection real to me.  But sometimes, on a more non-conventional note, the things that clear the mud from my eyes, are the springtime wildflowers.

This spring, I have become well acquainted with the stretch of Highway 6 between Waco and Bryan/College Station.  My Aunt and Uncle live on a ranch just outside of Bryan, and I had been before, but it has seemed more beautiful than ever these past couple of months.  Either Texas is growing on me or I’ve just started looking more carefully.  I might as well have driven down Highway 6 with my hazards on. Yesterday, I got to drive home from Houston on this sacred stretch of highway with someone who was first my roommate but now has become a dear friend.  We had been separated for the past four months while she was off on an adventure, and I deeply missed her and also her company, care and the way she would do things for me, like leave the light on.

We drove yesterday in an off-and-on kind of silence, and I think I speak for both of us when I say that we were filled with reconnecting, prayer-like songs on the radio and, of course, the bluebonnets.  And in this perfect and peaceful space between what feels like the end of an ending and the beginning of a beginning, I felt words like Hallelujah from the inside out. And in this very subtle way, Hope, and all of its attachments- goodness and mercy and lovingkindness are truer than they were yesterday. Resurrection has been practiced effortlessly because today it is Easter, and tomorrow will be too, and it satisfies.

Love-Lambs: Spring 2010

I just spent a weekend in New York celebrating a dear friend. What. A. City. I had been there before, but it’s been some time, so I felt like I got a second chance at a first impression.

Some first time visitors are awestruck by the looming buildings or the swarms of bodies climbing into the same subway car.  The same wide eyed folks might count how many languages they’ve  heard while perusing the MET, or how many boutiques hem in Brooklyn’s street corners. Others are inclined to feel the energy, the adrenaline, the rush of so many lives seeking so many differently similar things.  I’ve found, however, that most never fail to mention the pizza. Let’s be honest- food is a sincere love.

So this is what I’m writing tonight: about sincere love.  Like pizza which is most concretely cheese, tomato and starch, and most abstractly an Italian art form, love is best when it’s both.  It’s entirely simple (mozz+tomato+bread) and entirely complex (who knows anything about Italian cooking?). Give me a brick oven pizzeria in the West Village and a four cheese pie? “Buon Appetito!” I’m in love.

I haven’t found him (you know not to be cheesy but, “the one,”) yet, but I tell myself he is coming as quick as he can. And maybe, just maybe, the hold-up has to do with the fact that he’s been stumped by this mozzarella of a mystery too. I once experienced a break-up/breaking-off/ending of a dear relationship (read: most painful), in which I pleaded with this person who didn’t love me back to tell me why he ever referred to us as “we” if in fact, he didn’t love me the way I loved him.  I know it sounds pathetic, but it was the real thing.  He would always talk about OUR plans and where WE were going and what WE would do and how WE were different than everyone else. Did he not understand the significance of these pronouns? “Everybody wants a we!” I cried to him.  It was sad. As he shook his head, I felt bare and I never wanted to see him again.  We did not go together anymore.

And that’s what it comes down to doesn’t it?  Belonging.  Even before the philosophical truth that love is this astoundingly simple and complex wonder of a thing like light or wind or water, we first understand that we belong to our beloved.  I am yours, you are mine. Not like a possessive ownership thing. . But a BElonging, the long-awaited piece: tailored to fit a longing.

I have found myself, these past few weeks, increasingly grateful for the complexity of my God’s love for me. He is Abba Father, and Messiah King and Counselor Friend. He loves me.  Some nights, I am in such great awe that I might lift up my hands, or open my heart, or pray for purpose with more purity than the night before.  Or quite simply, I might just thank Him that He is my shepherd and I am His lamb and He is gentle with my stubborn bleating self.  And then I will roll over and sleep well. We cannot help but be found by the depth of His love. It seeks us out, beckoning, “Come, come, you belong with me.”   What sweeter words do we know?

New-ish Grown-Ups

Yesterday evening I celebrated the 29th birthday of my friend dear friend, J.  J is her nickname because she is petite, sweet and to-the-point and it has fit her for as long as I have known her. All honorary invitees to this party were total foodies so we dined well: chile-quile, homemade guacamole, and a creamy/cool dessert. The evening was slow, lingering and celebrating her was a process, as it should be.

My favorite writer of late, Barabara Kingsolver, pays much homage to the processes of life:  celebrations, but other things, too. She writes about organic transformation.  Even more, she trusts that the basics we often neglect, suffice as cultivation. I love Barbara for this, and I loved last night for this too. I’ll try to explain. This particular house I was at, is always a little wild and random.  Nothing is really set up just so, or has to be this way or just like that. The conversation lulls and then we go outside, wave to the neighbors, talk about tattoos, go back in. Time seems to take its time- slow and lazy and dawdling the way grownups told us not to.  The dishes stay undone and the dogs (all four) play. All is well, and I like it. I know that I’ll go home when it’s time but for now, I’ll stay and drink sweet red wine. To my friends in the yellow house, please keep inviting me over.  I like laughing with you. We stick to the basics: good food and good company and it always works out.

Things move along.  We step from one decade to the next. And I think I’m realizing that new things, or stages, or days, are more new-ish, not just plain new.  Take age for example.  Do you recall when age became very apparent to you? I do.I was probably four and focused on telling people I was four and three quarters.  Additionally, I was a girl. Four year are naturally self-obsessed, labeling all parts of themselves and others, too. (We’ve all had these awkward conversations) That small wrapped up bundle was a baby. The gray-haired woman with the old man was a grandma. My cool single babysitter with the poufy bangs and painted fingernails was a teenager. And the tall(er) woman next to me that made rules and kept me safe was a grown-up. 

I’m a twenty five year old grown-up, and last night J became a twenty nine year old one. I feel sort of grown-up on the inside, but I am not a very skilled rule-maker and I don’t have many people I need to keep safe. Maybe that’s coming.  Mostly, I feel like I have bits of all of my 4 year old and 9 year old and 15 year old (even thought I tell it to go away) and 21 year old selves in me all at once.  Something tells me it’s probably not a good idea to leave them behind altogether even though they might be unattractive, lest we forget who we were (are?). If we do, they’ll show up, in the middle of the night, drenched in loss: “I don’t like feeling deserted.”

Unexpected company. Let’s invite them in, out of the rain,  so they don’t stalk us.

We are new(ish) each day but the journey has mattered. And continues to. You know: that year we learned things aren’t as they seem. That year we lost hard. That year we realized we can’t always deliver. It adds up.  I guess it makes sense we wrinkle up too with all that baggage tucked away in our heart and soul. I just sure wish we didn’t. Perhaps my 32 year old self will be okay with it.

Grace Blankets

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This is a bit of River Road in Topsfield, Massachusetts near my hometown. I took the picture last January when I was home for the holidays. Growing up, I loved River Road because the grassy pastures folded and rolled the way I imagined the moors in the English countryside did.  Sometimes, I still get homesick for the River Road hills.

I have spent some of this morning thinking back on the space between the time I took this picture a year ago, and the time now and my eyes well up.  My 24th year was hard. I have no eloquent way to describe it because it felt so raw most of the time. And we all know that raw can be refining at best, gut-wrenching at worst, and the in-between was stark and lonely. In spite of the way I walked into each day frightened to take another step, God led me and the way was opened.  In spite of feeling quite vulnerable,  I woke up with the conviction that I am dearly loved–beloved in fact, and perfect for the One who matters.  And in the midst of happy and sad tears, I found myself believing more than I ever have in my whole life that He who has promised is faithful.  Thanks be.

So, I have no idea what 2010 holds. I have my wishes of course and I sure hope it’s better than last year, but I don’t really know.  I figure the odds are in my favor. Regardless, I am intent on being at peace.  In fact we are called to be this way because in and throughout Grace abounds! And that Grace in His Glory covers over the earth, like water over the seas. Or perhaps, as Grace was once described to me, as snow covers the hills.  As lovely and green as those River Road hills are nothing compares to their snow-covered perfection. The snow falls, and it blankets.  The messy, muddy, dried up brown stuff underneath? It’s no matter.  The snow is pristine so the hills are too. Can we take on perfection like the hills do?

Whatever this year brings you, and before we run full force into it with our resolutions and the like, may we be still for a moment in the perfect warmth of our Grace blankets.  And may we thank the One who wraps us up so tight.

With that, Happy New Year!

God With Us

I listened to a sermon recently by Corey Widmer, the pastor of my former church in Richmond, Virginia.  You can listen to the sermon, “Searching God” here.  

Everytime I listen to him, I wish that I listened to him more; it makes me remember and miss home, and more importantly takes me to the crux of the Gospel- the outlandish generosity God has shown a broken and bumbling people. He outlines our calling to live in such a way that is a response to this radical love shown to us.

This sermon in particular comes from Luke 15- the parable of the lost sheep and the parable of the lost coin. In short: God rejoicing over our coming to Him. Rejoicing doesn’t even go far enough. He is ELATED that we are His, and the world stops when we finally put our bags down and let Him love us.  In this, I find the essence of a deeply relational, profoundly personal God. When I read this passage, I believe more than other times, that indeed, not a moment goes by when my Heavenly Father is not one with me- in his mind and on his heart so much so that I might be “engraved on the palms of His hands,” like the prophet Isaiah says.

During advent we use language that rejoices over the coming of our Savior: “Joy to the World!”  I love this season dedicated to love and longing, I picture God’s people, linking hands, smiles bright, “We are ready!” “We have been waiting!”  “Come to us!”

But what I think is funny is that in our imploring and our exultations, sometimes I forget that it is not we, the receivers that have an ounce of anything to really offer.  “Welcoming” brings along with it this idea of hospitality and graciousness.   It is fun to welcome a beloved friend into a home cozy and lit with candles- soup on the stove, bread on the oven. At least it is for me.  I like giving and offering parts of myself to people that I love.

But may we remember in this season, that despite our humble exclamations to the King of Kings, the Prince of Peace: “O Come, O Come, Emmanuel!” It really is He, who is coming after us. And while in His graciousness and lavish love, He finds our offerings and preparations perfect, they are pittance to His glory.
I am reminded of a quote by Simon Tugwell my best friend Chelsea shared with me a long time ago, and while I never think of it as advent-y, for some reason, it is today:

“So long as we imagine it is we who have to look for God, we must often lose heart. But it is the other way about: He is looking for us. And we can afford to recognize that very often we are not looking for God; far from it. We are in full flight from Him…and he knows this and has taken it into account. Where we thought finally to escape him, we run straight into His arms.  Our hope is in His determination to save us, and He will not give in.”

Emmanuel, God with us.  Amen.

Remembering Rwanda: Summer 2009

Dear Family and Friends,

I know this letter is long overdue.  After a whirlwind of a summer, I have finally taken the time to share with you some of my Rwanda trip.  Before I do, I want to thank you for the support I have received and felt from each of you.  I am both blessed and humbled by the outpouring of financial donations, encouragement and prayer with which you have so graciously provided me. Many, many thanks.

I toyed with giving you a play-by-play account of what we did, whom we met and what we learned.  But, containing the experience I had into a journalistic account, travel log or the like doesn’t seem to do my time in Rwanda justice. It feels too narrow especially in a place where time was never the essence! So, to share Rwanda with you, I will try my best to tell you what I learned and what I felt, and now, what it is that I (think) I might know.

A page in my Rwanda journal is devoted to a list of words that best characterized this “land of a thousand hills.”  While it seems rather reductionist of me to summarize a nation of such strength and beauty in three words, I’ll do it anyways. For me, Rwanda was gracious, alive and open.  First impressions really are priceless, especially when traveling, and these three words began my word list on Day Two of our trip.  They stick with me and will remain my words for Rwanda.

On that same Day Two when Rwanda became gracious alive and open, our team drove around for some time in our ma-ta-tu (Rwandan word for bus), and I was overwhelmed by the amount of people outside! It sounds naïve, but I wanted to ask the people on the side of the road, “Where are you going?” People were walking (or skipping, or running) barefoot, people were in deep conversation, they were hanging up signs, digging ditches or carrying jugs of water.  People rode up and down the street on bikes, oftentimes with two or three babies in tow.  Even though this day-to-day (that is: the digging, and the carrying and the towing) looked at worst unpleasant and at best humdrum and routine, when we interacted with Rwandans, I thought their life was exciting! Full! And, perhaps most significantly altogether peaceful.   I walked away feeling refreshed and encouraged.  They seemed to embrace life, down to the very moment.  Or maybe, I was just seeing people who were simply convinced that life embraced them—I’m still not really sure which way it might go.

Early on in our visit, we learned about the Rwandan genocide, which took place from mid-April to early July in 1994.  I went to Rwanda with a vague idea of the atrocities that took place, yet visiting the many memorials honoring the 800,000 victims reshaped my perceptions.  One survivor’s story resonated with me in particular when she equated the terror of mid-1994 with a morbid silence.  “For 100 days,” she said, “no one said a word.”  I don’t know that I have ever imagined fear as acutely as I did as our new friend shared further details.  They were gruesome.  I have always found great value in sharing stories.  There is something that (can be) so genuine when people share a bit of his or herself and the listener willingly receives it. Relationship. Connection. The like. Yet as I listened to this young woman’s story, which was like so many other Rwandan survivor stories, I felt overwhelmingly moved yet entirely disconnected.

What do I know? I thought to myself.  What do I know of courage or of hope or of family or of forgiveness? She spoke about these things with such grace and such candor that my eyes welled up. “How easy it is! “ I thought to myself. “How easy it is to feel convicted about these very things our friend spoke of from the comfort of my Waco, Texas apartment in a place where I am supported and encouraged and rest-assured that I will go to bed well-fed.  Writer Anne Lamott says that our most ardent and genuine prayers go something like this: “Thank you, thank you, thank you,” and “Help me, help me, help me.” And in that moment, I thanked God over and over again, for this lady, for her story and for the way it brought me down to my knees.

Learning about the genocide at the beginning of our trip opened me up. It opened me up to experience and to heartache and to the moment because perhaps more than before, I believed that the moment at hand is the only moment we have. And indeed, most of Rwanda I can classify as a series of moments.  The moment that beauty was an old Rwandan woman dressed in bright yellow grabbing my hand and saying “mara-ho.”  The moment that our bus driver, Cyusa (pronounced Choo-sa) told us that he  “would never forget us” and was “full of happy.”  The moment two Rwandan orphans, one named Rose and the other a name that I cannot pronounce, taught me a traditional Rwandan dance.  They were so kind and so patient with me and then all of the sudden, the dance wasn’t awkward anymore, it was fun! The moment that I looked around and saw that everyone was dancing and laughing and dancing some more.  The moment our team found we would, in fact, be performing the song “Father Abraham” in front of a Rwandan congregation.   There were many more full moments like these, most of them brimming with such unique experience that I could barely stand it and sometimes, it felt like I should be able to touch it.

But most of all, Rwanda opened me up to the greatness of our God.  Indeed, part of this characterization is in the most self centered sense, a response to how big the world felt and how small I felt when I was in Rwanda. But the other half has to do with the mysteriousness of our God’s love.

Before I explain, bear with me for a moment. In my social work classes we spent a great deal of time talking about empathy. That is, how to put yourself in someone else’s shoes: honor their experience of course, but with a bit of intuition, or an attempt to conjure up the feelings that the client might be experiencing.   If your client is grieving, take yourself to a time when you suffered great loss.  In other words, invade the mystery of the other a little bit.  Recognize that your experience will never be his or hers, but in the name of service, link a bit of your life and maybe even heart to the one before you.  In Rwanda, I could not do this. It was all mysterious. And it didn’t even feel like I had a right to touch it. I could not touch it.  I was too far away.  In these moments I felt I didn’t know how to relate. I didn’t know how to understand.  There were times when I thought that I didn’t even have a right to listen.  I probably didn’t, but true to their graciousness, the Rwandans shared.

But the really funny thing? In spite of this initial disconnectedness this total foreignness, this “oh-my-goodness my world is being shaken more than I bargained for” kind of feeling, we were all still together.  We played together (a soccer game: Rwandans vs. Americans), laughed together, broke bread together, worked together, danced together and worshipped together.  It was altogether mysterious and beautiful and felt filled with the Spirit of God.  We felt close in the purest kind of way, the kind that transcends self and embraces redemption.  In the gospel of Luke, Jesus says to the Pharisees, “ ‘ The kingdom of God is not to be observed, nor will they say, ‘Look, here it is!’ or ‘There!’ for behold, the kingdom of God is in the midst of you’” (Luke 17: 21-22).   Jesus tells us here that the Kingdom of God is within our grasp. Closer than we think.  Maybe right under our very noses. And in Rwanda, there was a holiness that brought such light to those words.

God and all His goodness, all His hopefulness, all His light and His love; all these things that I seek in all the wrong places seemed to just come.  What a blessing! While the vividness of Rwanda has faded a bit, sometimes it seems that the memories rush in as alive and as gracious as the Rwandans themselves.  In the midst of these waves, my cup runs over.

I hope that yours are too.

With Love and Grace,

Sarah

Forgetting

I once came across a bit of spiritual wisdom that resonated well with me.  I don’t remember who it was or where it was, but it stuck.  The gist was: mundane religious habits and habitual acts of worship oftentimes feel silly, basic even, in light of our extraordinary God, but even so, they are important. Why? Because they help us to remember.

And we are so forgetful, aren’t we?

I’ll speak for myself.  I know I am quite easily distracted by the newest, brightest (and often fleeting) idea, hobby, fashion, relationship or the like.  And quite frankly, living in new inspiration feels far better than singing the doxology every Sunday or tithing every month. But even so, the habit still helps me to remember.  Once again, in between the lines of the song, I think or sense that my God does not change, and that He is with me, and that He is the Love that will not leave.  And even when I do not feel close to Him, the practice keeps me anchored at least for a little bit. I have learned to trust the motions and God’s working in them, albeit that my heart does not always sing.

I thought about this idea of remembering when I framed a picture from my trip to Africa and put it on my desk at work.

For two weeks in May, I went to Rwanda.  I experienced a nation pulled by the tension of two deep attachments: fear and hope. I played with Rwandan children.  I learned Rwandan dances. I shopped at Rwandan markets.  I worshipped with Rwandan people.  And then I left.

I think about Rwanda often and feel a little confused.  I am not trying to be dramatic, but I really do. I came back to the United States on June 3rd, and everything went back to normal.  I did not cry about my trip, or have a hard time reconnecting to my friends, I did not become overwhelmed by the daily abundance we experience here in the United States.  I’m not even sure that I was all that jet-lagged.

So, I think this “confusion” comes in part from the smoothness of my transition. I know that many people have a rocky transition, but I did not. I hope this doesn’t make me a bad person. But, I think I just forgot. I am embarrassed by how easily I forgot the richness of dancing in the rain, or holding their hands, or watching them smile.

So, when I framed the picture of me with six Rwandan boys that you see above, it felt funny. It felt funny because I am distant now, and it would be silly for me to think that I fostered a deep and meaningful connection when really we just shared a meal one afternoon in late May.  But, I framed it anyways, because I want to remember.

And I believe that the experience was rich enough, deep enough, pure enough, that it will continue to bear fruit, even though I am far from it.