Take a photograph, 'cause this ain't gonna last...

The last few weeks have felt largely surreal. I'm not in South Africa anymore, and it's still hard to take in the fact that I'm not returning. As I said goodbyes, person after person asked me when I'd be back. I reassured many friends that I'll visit, and I've left and returned enough times that it seems I'll be headed back before too long. But in my brain I know this is the end of an era (even if my heart hasn't absorbed it yet). I'm moving on. I don't know into what, and that may be part of why the leaving is still so surreal.

After leaving South Africa, I spent a week in Malaysia and then one in Thailand. My time in Malaysia was at first full of reunions--many friends I hadn't seen in months or years were gathered in one place as part of the CRM Worldwide Conference. As the week came to a close, the reality of saying goodbyes to those friends, as well as the reality that I was leaving CRM, began to sink in.

The day the conference ended, I took a taxi to a ferry to a taxi to a train... and on that overnight train across Malaysia, I had one of those moments where time and place and music and life converge. I was traveling at high speeds away from the ending of something good, and heading into new travels in another country. The lights were out in the train compartment, I was tucked into my little bunk listening to my iPod, and Andrew Osenga's song "Photograph" was playing:

"...so take a photograph
if you're wanting this to last
'cause you can try the best you can
but God knows, it's about to end."

For the last few months, I've been holding on to the idea of continuing in full-time international vocational ministry. I've wanted this season of my life to last. I've explored 9 teams in 6 different cities (some more thoroughly than others). None of these opportunities have worked out: I've been turned down, referred elsewhere, it's been the wrong time, it hasn't fit, or it just hasn't felt right.

Acts 16:6-10 was a passage I spent a lot of time with in October and November, when I decided God was leading me out of NieuCommunities and into something new. At the time, I was struck by the way Paul & the apostles tried to go several places, and the Holy Spirit prevented them--literally kept them from going where they thought they were supposed to go. There's been an element of that in my last 8 months. And so, I've been letting go. The CRM conference in many ways marked the end of an era, as well as a letting go of this form of ministry for the next season of my life. That night in the train--however belatedly--was a final acknowledgment that "it's about to end." But also: that it was good. And that the ending of it is also good.

The song ends with the repeated lines: "I don't know where I'm going / but I know that you'll be there." Sometimes I'm okay with the not knowing, and other times not so much. It comes and goes. But I'm confident that there is another era in store for me, and that God will be there, as he has been so profoundly all along.

Writings I've relatedly been reading:
Arriving Back in KC
When Endings Come

Where to find God

From an Advent devotional I've been reading this season:

A Hasidic story tells of a rabbi's son who used to wander in the woods. The rabbi asked his son, "I wonder why each day you walk in the woods?" The boy replied, "I go there to find God." "That's very good, son. But, don't you know that God is the same everywhere?" "Yes," the boy answered, "but I'm not."

A good reminder of my need to seek God in the ways that I can best meet Him this season. God is the same everywhere. But I am not, and I need to remember that. Especially during the transition and unsettledness of a furlough.

God's Invitation Part Two: Some Further Literary Details

(Skip to the post below for context... or just a shorter version.)

Around the borders of the invitation I created, I wrote some lines from a Gerard Manley Hopkins poem that continues to resurface in relevance for me.

Each mortal thing does one thing and the same:
Deals out that being indoors each one dwells;
Selves—goes itself; myself it speaks and spells,
Crying What I do is me: for that I came.

What if what you’re called to do is simply to be who you are? This is a key part of my understanding of God’s invitation at this point in my life: God invites me to be myself. This is such a freeing thought: I am invited to be myself. My truest self, my self as I was created to be.

The poem goes on, and these lines also appear in the borders of my invitation:

I say more: the just man justices;
Keeps grace: that keeps all his goings graces;
Acts in God’s eye what in God’s eye he is—
Christ. For Christ plays in ten thousand places,
Lovely in limbs, and lovely in eyes not his
To the Father through the features of men’s faces.

Suggested reading for the weekend retreat was a book called The Great Dance. One part of the book in particular resonated quite deeply for me:

“[Jesus] continues to live out his sonship, today and forever, as a human being—he just does not do it alone, but in union with us, in and through us, in and through our work and play and gardening, in and through our relationships, our friendships, our marriages and romance…” (63)

It’s this idea that the last few lines of the poem address: that the life of Christ is lived out today in us, in our everyday lives as we live the fullness of the life God gives. As we live out our true identity. God invites us to live as who we were intended to be, and in so doing, we reflect Christ. And it's beautiful.


On a related note: I find that for me, God speaks loudest when multiple, seemingly unrelated sources converge at the same time with the same message. As I caught up on some blog reading yesterday, I found this post on one of my favorite blogs. These coincidences happen too often to me.

God's Invitation

Peace of Christ
Gate and cross at St. Benedict’s House, Rosettenville, Joburg

This past weekend was our community reflection retreat, looking back on the Inviting Posture. The apprentices and a few of the staff (Bryan, Dayna, and me) went to a retreat center in Joburg for solitude and reflection, and sharing together what God had been doing in each of us during the posture and over the weekend.

As part of the posture, apprentices had been asked to write out their understanding of God’s invitation extended to all mankind. As part of the weekend, we were to finish writing (or start and finish writing!) these invitations.

Some created tangible physical invitations, others crafted words in journals; some were very personal and others more universal, but all of us attempted to convey a glimpse of what God is inviting us into. All 11 of us shared our invitations with each other on Sunday morning before we headed back to Pretoria. We went around the circle, each person sharing a little about the writing of their invitation, and then reading it aloud.

As Oupa read his invitation, I had one of those moments of resonance. It was such a beautiful picture to sit there with my community, hearing each person articulate God’s invitation in their own words: unique and yet so very universal pieces of the incomprehensible idea of God’s invitation to mankind.

Each one represented a different piece of God’s invitation; together they pointed to something so much larger. As the winter sunlight streamed through the windows over Oupa’s shoulders, I saw and heard a glimpse of God’s Kingdom in our midst. A glimpse of the Kingdom that is here, at hand, and to come. We are invited in.

Here’s my invitation.

Come to me.

Come and discover the home you long for, the place where you belong. Join the feast at my table; the family waits for your arrival. You are invited to live your life from within the family of God. Make your home here and find your identity as a child of this family.

Come and discover who you’re created to be—live out who you really are as a child in my house. I invite you into my life, that you may live Christ in your life.

Come, discover your deepest desires; live your truest identity, and you will find me there.

Home is waiting. It has been prepared for you.

You are invited in.

What do you want?

Do you want to be healed?

Come to me.

Reminder

I've needed encouragement to persevere lately. As I've been in the middle of sustaining hurts and working at addressing the conflict that often comes when living in community, I've grown weary of the hard work it takes. During the recent women's trip, I was looking at some necklaces in a small shop. One in particular caught my eye, a rectangle with a small symmetrical cross symbol on it. The card it was attached to said it was an African symbol for endurance. I've been at a place of wanting to give up on several community issues lately, and found it significant that this particular necklace caught my eye.

Home from the women's trip, I've changed my desktop picture to the following image, taken in Florence a few years ago. These instructions appear on the plexiglass around the gallery inside the Duomo, about halfway through a climb to the top of the dome. I found the instructions amusing at the time. Right now, I need the reminder.

Ash Wednesday

A bit of a departure from the update. I think a lot of things that had been kicking around in my head are finding voice today. This is one of those.

Arthur sent our team here an email recently, just making us aware that Ash Wednesday is tomorrow, and wondering if we would want to do something for Lent, as individuals or as a community. I had intended to spend time tonight thinking and praying about what that might be for me. I've never really observed Ash Wednesday or given something up for Lent, and feel like this year would be a good time to start--to mark the season in some way. I got distracted tonight by working on some donations info and settling some accounting stuff online (ugh), but before I logged off for the night, Melissa had sent a couple links with some further information on Ash Wednesday. And I started typing. =)

While reading Psalm 51 last night, I began thinking about just how public David's sin was. His adultery with Bathsheba was something that he took desperate measures to conceal. But his sin--and his repentance--were ultimately recorded in the Bible in both narrative and poetry. What was secret and concealed became known and recorded for all who followed after. One of the things David is known for is that very public sin. I wondered how it would feel to be known, for the rest of your life and thousands of years afterwards, for such a public example of sin.

As I read this, the following stuck out to me:

"Ashes marked on the forehead of worshippers were not given to everyone, but only to the public penitents who were brought before the church. Much like Hester Prynne bearing her scarlet letter, these open and notorious sinners were marked publicly with the sign of their disgrace.

As time went on, others began to show their humility and their affection for the penitents by asking that they, too, be marked as sinners. Finally, the number of penitents grew so large that the imposition of ashes was extended to the whole congregation in services similar to those that are observed in many Christian churches on Ash Wednesday."

This reminded me that whether it's known publicly or not, we are all like David. We may try desperately to hide it, but we are all sinners. Derek Webb sings about "trading sins for others that are easier to hide"--a phrase that resonates with me all too well. As long as others don't know what I'm hiding, it's okay. Somehow it's okay that God knows--just as long as others don't. And I think that's probably what David got caught up in--a desperate attempt to keep his sin quiet. It had disastrous results. But the whole debacle, recorded in scripture, continues to remind me of my own attempts to conceal, and my own deep need for forgiveness.

"We who will bear the ashes upon our foreheads stand with those whose sins may be more public, but not, according to the Scriptures, more grievous to the heart of God. And so we make our confessions. . . . If you only knew the secrets of my heart, if you only knew the sins that I am capable of contemplating, if you only knew some of the schemes I have considered – and of course God does know – then you would know that I, too, am a sinner."

At this season leading up to Easter, I'm looking for something tangible to remind me, daily, of my need for Christ--of my need for the sacrifice of Good Friday and the victory of Easter morning. I pray that for you, too--that God would remind you of not only Ash Wednesday, but also of Easter Sunday.