Still waiting in Uganda

The CI-UCBC International Staff received word this week that we are to delay our return to Beni for another several days, perhaps a week. The situation in Beni is stabilizing. The 6:30pm – 6:00am curfew remains in place and the city has been spared large-scale events. A few days ago an attack on a village just north of the UCBC campus was repulsed without casualties. Two arrests were made the following day. They resulted in the confession of an a FARDC (DRC army) soldier to complicity in that and previous attacks. The resulting investigations have given citizens some assurance that authorities are taking action. CI-UCBC leadership and staff remain in close and consistent contact with a variety of security sources, local government, and NGOs. 

But the verdict for us is, “Wait.”

Waiting is work. It isn’t easy work. We Americans like to do. We like outcomes and evidence. We like completed reports and PowerPoint presentations, painted fences and repaired plumbing, the kitchen cleaned and the trash emptied. But sometimes the work we are called to do is to wait, to sit in the middle of our powerlessness. We are, after all, powerless over people, places, and circumstances. The only real power any of us has is power over ourselves and our responses to people, places, and circumstances. The rest is illusion.

Waiting is an opportunity to sit in the silences, to listen, to feel breath and heartbeat. Waiting is time to open our eyes and see what we miss when we are busy with our doing.

So what are some of the things my eyes have opened to during waiting time? Here are a few: 

• My character defects. In spite of my best efforts to be self-aware, my impatience and desire to be in charge slip in through the cracks in the day. 
• Memories in need of healing. Some very old and not-so-old memories have stepped out of the closet and into my heart. This waiting time gave them permission to reveal themselves. This waiting time offered space for them to breathe and heal. 
• Smiling. I want to smile more. I will smile more.
• Answers to prayer. God continues to strengthen, heal, and protect loved ones in Beni, in the US, and elsewhere. Two UCBC staff members are brand new parents, and we rejoice in the safe deliveries of their babies. People who were sick are now well. Loved ones who have been struggling know respite.
• Young leaders at UCBC living into their responsibilities. Service learning interns have been meeting with faculty to advise on curriculum. The YECA Fellows and Creation Care Committee have introduced their plans to the UCBC community and welcomed new members into their ranks. 

O God of peace, who has taught us that in returning and rest we shall be saved, in quietness and in confidence shall be our strength; By the might of your Spirit lift us, we pray, to your presence, where we may be still and know that you are God; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

BCP, Prayer for Quiet Confidence, p. 832

Saturday Afternoon at Bethel House

Two days of rain finally came to an end this afternoon. The sun is shining. The solar lamps stand sentinel-like and recharge. The dishes dry in the sun. 

Across the street at the 7^th Day Adventist Church, a men’s quartet practices songs from my childhood—songs that my father, Lyle Chase, and their tenor and baritone partners offered during Sunday evening worship. Sometimes Dad and Mom sang in SATB quartets as Sunday evening “special music.” Funny how this place, Beni, calls up memories of the small manufacturing town and railroad stop where I grew up, Corry, PA.

But this day. From my perch at my desk, I look directly at the wall surrounding our compound. Just above stands the top of Renaly’s Alimention, “La Devouverte” (Renaly’s Grocery Story: The Discovery). Renaly’s is a sort of Beni strip mall. It's a long, low building with several “storefronts.” A bar, a shop that sells food items and sundries, a coiffure, and a pharmacie operate on the premises. Renaly’s Alimentation livens our evenings with a repetitive playlist at volumes that meriting a call to local authorities for “disrupting the peace” in the US.

The gospel quartet has disbursed. The street now plays its music. Motos rumble past as the bass and percussion. A radio at the alimentation sings a tenor line. Women call out greetings and a group of children plays behind us. A baby cries a sad melody against the harmonies. A songbird chips an occasional ornamentation, a grace note frequently lost in the din. Sometimes the delicate note calls out of a slice of quiet before the downbeat.

I have to think in these terms and find beauty in the din. Otherwise the sounds crash against each other and scream insults. I want quiet. I want only the songbird’s singular and gentle grace notes. I want the motos and the radio and the honking to cease. 

I want. I want. I want.

 

If I were in the US right now I would be railing against the onslaught of holiday advertisements, cheap music, and the siren call to buy more than I can afford or anyone needs.

So, I have a choice. Wish. Want. Stew in “If only” and “Why don’t they…?” Or accept what is and change what I can. “God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change what I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.”

Oh….and enjoy the sun!

God-carrier

I’m selfish. I admit it. I want people to do things the way I think they should be done. I want events to unfold according to my expectations. I begin too many sentences with I.

But when I give in to God and allow that people and events do as they are supposed to do, God either teaches, surprises, or blesses me. God has been sprinkling blessings amidst the teaching lately (“a spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down?”).

For this stint in Beni, I’m living at Bethel House—a house that CI-UCBC is renting to accommodate international staff and visiting professors. For the first time we Americans (currently it’s Americans who make up “international staff”) share living space and meals with Congolese professors. It’s a grand opportunity for cultures to brush up against each other.

This past week I’ve been harboring ill feelings towards one of my “housemates.” He hasn’t done anything to me. He’s just been who he is, wrapped in his personality, preferences, and values, a product of his culture and experiences, with views about gender and class shaped by all of that and more. And, of course, I’ve been wrapped in my personality, preferences, and values. I, too, am a product of my culture and experiences, with views about gender and class.

I confess that earlier this week I did not want to spend time with this teacher. I was not interested in getting to know him or engaging in conversation. I had developed opinions and maintained prejudices based on a handful of observations. My selfishness and tendency towards judgment stood firm.

Then Desmond Tutu challenged me in that loving, impish voice and that gentle, magnanimous spirit. Krista Tippett conducted an interview with him in 2010 for On Being. Early in the interview Bishop Tutu responds to a question about the “dynamite” power of the Bible. He says, “We are created in the image of God….Each one of us is a God-carrier,” then proceeds to tell the story of a township parish he pastored early in his ministry. The members were poor, many of them domestic workers in the white enclaves in another world. Most of the women were called “Annie,” and most of the men were called “Boy,” because the whites insisted the African names were too difficult to pronounce. Tutu would tell his congregants, “When they ask ‘Who are you?’ tell them, ‘I’m a God-carrier. I’m God’s partner.’"

God-carrier. We’re each of us a God-carrier? Yes. Created in God’s image. Yes, we are. We are. Not just me. Not just the people I love, or the people who are my friends, or the people I enjoy being with, or the people with whom I gladly and expectantly share my life. But even the moto-driver who insists on charging me double the going rate for a ride between Bethel House and the UCBC campus is a God-carrier. The Congolese youth who stares and shouts, “Muzungu!” when I pass is a God-carrier. My temporary housemate is a God-carrier. Ouch!

Have I become great friends with this other teacher? No. But as I’ve allowed my heart to soften, mealtimes are more pleasant, at least for me. I’m less inclined to focus on what I find distasteful. I’m kinder and gentler and more inclined to act as a God-carrier myself.

Choosing joy and gratitude

Bee balm: a funky, raggedy, and joyous!

I like to think that I'm a "glass is half full" kind of person. The truth is that while the glass may be half full, it does have a chip on the rim or there is some bit of floating lint or insect piece. Yes, half full, but...

Wouldn't be bad if I were to keep my observations to myself or let them bounce and slide, ice-cube-like, off the edge and onto the floor. But no. I'm in the bad habit of wearing mild disappointments confidently--not loudly or brazenly, but with quiet assurance. Ask me "How are you?" and you're likely to get, "OK" or "Not bad."

Geesshhh! I don't want to be around me sometimes! ...

Some personal learning

I hate the expression, "out of your/my comfort zone." I don't like the implication of defined spaces. In and Out. Reflection of my approach to life? My thinking/learning style? I prefer the gray places, the fuzzy edges. I've never been completely comfortable with straight answers and clear-cut rules. Interesting the adjectives, straight and clear-cut. It was always one of my challenges as a parent, and one of the challenges in my second marriage. My kids seem to have survived. The marriage did not. But for other reasons and another story.

So, back to "out of your comfort zone." I understand that there is something about human nature, perhaps all of nature, that calls us to be where it's comfortable. We gather with people we know. We live in neighborhoods where others look like us and presumably have the same level of economic security and education as we do, and where our neighbors share (for the most part) our color, our values, our culture. We work to make our daily existence easy. We engage in "debate" with those who are like-minded. We listen to and read the pundits, journalists, publications that support our way of thinking, our ideals and values.

I am guilty. I can also defend and justify these behaviors on a number of fronts. I have begun to wonder more about what we/I lose by living this way.

There is something in biology or ecology about the richest, most vital part of an ecological system is in the edges. That is where the most biologically diverse activity occurs.

Whenever I have been in a new place and with people who, in my first glance, appear to be different from me, I have learned, grown, been challenged, stretched. Sometimes I have learned new things about myself, or come to admit things about myself that I had been able to deny previously. Always I have learned new truths, realities, and ideas.

Here is something I've learned recently as a result of my engagement with CI-UCBC and this first time in Congo. I have been guilty of objectifying poverty (and I hate even to name the it as poverty). In my comfort zone, within my boundaries, my safe, middle class (and evangelical Christian) context, poverty has been "out there." It is something outside my "comfort zone." As such, it has been easy to treat is as other, as an object. It is something to be solved, addressed. It is something to which I respond briefly and episodically. I can give money. I can give my cast-offs to it. Help out on a weekly or quarterly basis. I can even take pictures of it (for which I offer a public apology). Always, though, poverty is outside my comfort zone. Always I can and do step safely back into my comfort zone.

I don't think that Jesus said, "The poor you will have with you always," to exonerate us from helping the poor. I'm beginning to wonder about the other messages in this statement--the metamessages.

Perhaps this statement is an exhortation to be with the poor. To live among and with--and not just to be able to help, educate, contribute economically or financially. But to learn from and live in parity with. Scary thought. Very scary.

What might I learn from living in and among those who are poor, as defined by my experience? My community of middle class, Americans (including middle class, American, Christians)? That I'm NOT in control. That all I own is grass that withers in the sun. That peace comes not from my surroundings, but from my heart. That sufficient is enough, and, sadly, my definition of enough has been more than enough, it is excess. That death and life are constant realities. (Within my first 8 days in Congo, there have been 2 deaths in families that are friends and/or relatives within this tight knit community. And, as David Kasali reminds me, death is part of the reality of this place).

And once I've learned these and other lessons, how might I act differently? Live differently? How might my actions, my choices, my behaviors contribute to the common good rather than to my own? How must I act differently, live differently now?