Tag: hope

The story I carry inside me

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bowen island

“The past year has perhaps been the most difficult one of my life.”

So begins the blog post I’ve written for The Mudroom today. It’s the most vulnerable thing I’ve written recently: a reflection on the experience of deciding to leave India and then struggling to find my feet again in the West. The piece is a very brief snapshot of what has been and continues to be a difficult and beautiful journey for me.

For the past 10 months in Vancouver, I’ve been prevented from working or beginning grad school because of a lengthy immigration process. I’ve often felt trapped by my powerlessness to do anything about my permanent residency, and I’ve been frustrated by having so much time at loose ends. I said when I came here that I was looking for a season of rest and healing, but I have continued to fight that every step of the way, wanting desperately to jump into another busy season and another purposeful role that might provide a new identity for me instead of allowing my identity to be completely separated out from what I do. Who am I when I simply am?

When I allow myself to accept what is happening instead of trying so hard to change it, I recognize the gift of this time. I was able to go to counseling for several months to process my experiences in India (and my life up to this point); to gain valuable insights and skills. I took advantage of the opportunity to go on a few days’ silent retreat during Advent, and I’ll be returning to the same tranquil island for a 10-day silent retreat at the end of this month (a prospect which both thrills and terrifies me). I’ve had the time to get to know refugee claimants at Kinbrace, holding babies and cutting birthday cakes and eating delicious foods that remind my new friends of their faraway families and homes. Andy and I have been sheltered by a church community and befriended by a circle of wonderful people who make Vancouver feel like home for us weary travelers.

One of the biggest gifts of my enforced joblessness has been the freedom to write for long stretches of time. I’ve written a few freelance pieces here and there, but mainly I’ve been writing my book. I had no idea how long it would take. When I finished my first draft after six months, I remember thinking, “How do people spend years writing a single book?” Now I understand. Though not as much as I’m sure I will understand a few months from now, when I realize (again) how many steps I didn’t know about!

The process of writing a book has often felt like bushwhacking a trail through the jungle; I’m never sure what lies ahead or how far away my destination is. But without fail, at every moment of uncertainty a sign has appeared—in the form of a person I meet, a conversation I have, or a piece of information I come across—to direct me a few paces further. It has been by turns exhilarating, tedious, and discouraging. I’ll work on one part of my manuscript and think, Damn, this is good. Then later I’ll come back to it and think with alarm, This will never turn into a book.

I didn’t realize what a deeply personal and reflective process the writing would turn out to be. I didn’t realize how much of my own story—before, during, and after India—I would have to be willing to spill onto the page. I’ve had to face my fears of failure and of vulnerability again and again, but here—on the third draft—I’m feeling a growing confidence that there will actually be something to show at the end of all this craziness.

“The end” hasn’t yet been assigned a fixed date on the calendar, but it’s probably a testament to the growth of the past few months that the uncertainty no longer destabilizes me. In the meantime, click on over to The Mudroom to read more about the journey that is continuing to shape me, and my book.

burnout recovery process

A refuge in each other

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refugees boat people

Last week, I attended a memorial service for a woman I had never met—the mother of a man who was unable to see her before she passed away because he and his family are in the midst of a lengthy refugee claims process. They can’t leave Canada until their case has been decided, but their extended family is spread out across the globe. For more than a decade, their story has been shaped by war in their home country, and separation in other countries as various family members have had to settle wherever they could find asylum and safety. The “service” was an informal gathering of friends and fellow refugee claimants from diverse backgrounds and religious traditions. There were Muslim blessings and Christian prayers, heartfelt stories, tears, hugs, and hot tea. So many in the room could identify with the powerlessness of being halfway around the world, separated from loved ones whom they might never see again, unable to help in their distress or to be involved in their lives. I’m sure that nothing could have dulled the pain this family felt as they grieved the loss of a beloved parent, but perhaps being with others in this way was helpful in opening up a space to grieve well: to name their loss, to mourn deeply, and to begin to heal.

I saw so much of the Kingdom of God in that room: an inclusive and diverse community of people taking care of one another. I saw so much courage and strength in people who find the will every day to continue living in the midst of uncertainty, fear, and sadness; who learn a new language and raise their children and start a new life in a foreign place they never chose in the first place. In the midst of a bewildering situation of suffering that we all struggle to understand, they are asking their questions together, praying together, being together. In their compassion for one another, I sensed hope—despite all the evil and sorrow in the world, the people in that room have not been robbed of their humanity. They still choose to love one another.

It was humbling to be allowed to take part in that community.

My thoughts and prayers are with refugees around the world this week who find themselves waiting, in refugee camps or in boats adrift at sea, for someone to offer them safe harbor. I pray that more of us and our governments would be willing to make room for them in our societies; to open our borders and our hearts to extend the welcome of Christ to our neighbors.

I am writing a book.

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Three days ago, we had the first snowfall of the season, and it’s still on the ground. Here in Canada, everything is cold and white right now, and I sleep under thick blankets, type next to a space heater during the day, and try to learn how to dress properly with layers and layers of wool. I still remember those TV infomercials a few years ago about “Snuggies,” the blankets with arms that looked like cultic robes when the ad showed what looked like a family of suburban Druids enjoying a nighttime camp fire in their matching fleece ensemble. Now I am cold enough to wear a snuggie around the house without shame, cold enough not to care whether I look like an infomercial from the last decade or a member of a pagan cult.Advent has just begun: the season of waiting for the first spark of hope in the dead of winter, of looking for signs of life in the midst of death. Even Christmas itself will not the triumphant victory of Easter–it will be the quiet celebration of hope born into the world, even while oppression reigns. Shepherds and wise men visit this child in secret, because baby Jesus will still have to flee Herod’s genocide and grow up under foreign occupation before he leads justice to victory and inaugurates the Kingdom. I feel the tension and the hope of this waiting, this hope that is stubborn but uncertain of when fulfillment and completion will come.

I look at squirrel and bird tracks in the snow on the roof outside my window as I edit the manuscript of my book. The scenes outside are so different from the ones that linger in my mind. I’m writing about my life in India: what it was like to be an outsider accepted into community across boundaries of race, religion, culture, and socioeconomic background. I’m writing about how life with Muslim friends shaped my own faith, and how confronting suffering in the lives of my neighbors who were materially poor has challenged me to make sense of where God is in the midst of all the pain. I’m writing about how Muslims and Christians and rich and poor need one another, about what it means for us to love our enemies, and about the changes that community brings in us as individuals and in our world. I’m primarily writing about my own journey, and the love that I have continued to discover no matter how far I travel in any direction.

The process of writing has been good for me. It forces me to be present to process rather than destination, and this is certainly a process over which I have only limited control and knowledge about how long it will take or what the final result will be.

But it’s difficult, because sometimes spending my days writing feels like living with ghosts—not only of my friends and neighbors in India, but of many of my own dreams, expectations, and self-definitions as well. Aside from that, daring to ask for help, to show my writing to others, or to even say out loud that I am working on a book brings my insecurities out of the shadows, revealing my fears about whether this story really will come together in the end, whether it will get published, what people will think about it (and about me) if it is published.

But I believe that it is a story worth telling, even a story that needs to be told, and so I keep on writing. I am struggling, not to bring characters to life, but to allow the vibrant life of the real people I have known to shine through the pages. I want you to see them, to care about them, to learn from them. I am still learning from them myself.

Advent has begun: the season of waiting, expectation, and hope. Whispered promises of new possibilities to come. I am living towards these possibilities, working towards what, as yet, I have never seen but still believe is possible. I struggle on despite my fears, my fresh memories of loss, and the uncertainties of the future.

I trust that new life can begin even in the dead of winter, that those whispers of hope are trustworthy, and that we are but the midwives of the dreams God wants to birth into this world.

Stay tuned.

A death in the neighborhood

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There’s so much more I want to write about the things that go on in the lives of my neighbors and in my own life, but sharing it in short bursts online seems an inappropriate avenue. It would take a book to convey the complexities of all our lives, tangled up as we are in each other’s stories, and to explore all the things I am learning and unlearning in this wild, beautiful, and terrifying place. I intend to write that book someday, after more of the dust has settled and I am able to understand my experiences more clearly than I can today. But for now I’ll have to settle for sharing the soul of what’s on my mind, without sharing the details of the stories that have brought it about.It’s sad and confusing to see a life end with no apparent redemption in the arc of its story.

The bulk of my time and energy since has gone into being with those who are still alive and must carry on, but the suddenness of death in our neighborhood—again—turns my thoughts toward the reality that whether we die unexpectedly or old and boney, there is no surprise in the eventual end of life for each one of us. We are finite creatures, and death is unavoidable. I so often approach life as a project: I plan out the arc of my life, what I will accomplish, where I will go, who I will become. I try to assume control by planning, scheduling, keeping busy. But then I am reminded how quickly grief and loss could change my life completely, stealing away the people I love most, taking away the relationships and routines that make up the day-to-day fabric of my existence. I am sobered by the reality that all of this is beyond my control, and in the end life is not so much what I create for myself as it is what comes to me, and how I choose to respond.

All this meditation on death isn’t intended to be morbid. It’s actually a reflection on life: in light of the impending obliteration of all my worldly ambitions and activity, what is really worth my attention and energy in the meantime? What will remain after that final deconstruction of everything I have sought to accomplish and become? No status, recognition, or accumulation of possessions or material comforts will matter. Only the actions which I join to God’s larger action in the world will last, because God will continue to act in the world after I am gone, just as He was doing before my birth. Joining God in loving, serving, working for justice, and promoting truth is what will continue to matter beyond my lifetime. This is also what grows my own soul, and what prepares me for my continuing journey toward God, beyond the expiration date of this temporary body.

This doesn not mean that our bodies and spirits are entirely separate from one another, or that “spiritual” things are more important than “material” ones—God’s love is the cornerstone of the whole universe, and it’s the basis of everything else that is. In fact, the resurrection that Jesus talks about includes our bodies–scripture talks about God’s plan for healing and restoring the earth and raising us to live again within it, not taking us away to live somewhere else as disembodied spirits. So the warmth of the morning sun on my neck, the chirping of birds in the trees, the steaming cup of coffee in my mug, the laughter that I share with friends, and the gratifying soreness I feel in my muscles after exercise are all good and important things. They are gifts from this loving God who is the author of Life itself, and in whom everything lives, moves, and has its being. Life was God’s idea—sex and good food and sand between our toes.

But the trick to really enjoying all of these material gifts is being able to let them go. Detachment from each of these pleasures as an end in itself is the only way to embrace the Giver himself. It is also the only way that we will be able to experience the full breadth of existence, instead of constantly struggling to avoid suffering, grief, and loss (which are also gifts to us, if we have eyes to see). Spiritual teachers from the time of the Buddha, or probably earlier, have taught that life is suffering, and they have sought to free themselves from that suffering. But Jesus takes things a step further by turning suffering itself into a means of liberation: his suffering and death have transformed those things into sacred tools which can serve our good. Death has no power to destroy us, if the growing weakness and eventual defeat of our bodies gives us the chance to learn at an accelerated pace important that have eluded us throughout our lives. At the moment of death, we are no longer able to maintain our beauty, health, strength, usefulness, or whatever else we used throughout our lives to try to earn love, or to perpetuate the illusion that we were independent and in control. Freed from all these things, we have the chance to learn for the first time that we are loved apart from any of it—loved for ourselves alone.

Paradoxically, the path to authentic life takes us smack-dab through the middle of death. This is the mystery of resurrection: not simply life or death, but crucifixion and rebirth. Life has the final word, God has the final victory… but He has won by way of passing through defeat. This reflection on the transience of my life makes me long to move at last from compulsion to contemplation; from building a life and creating myself to accepting life and surrendering to the process of uncovering the self which God has already created: the one that so often gets lost or obscured behind the images I project to the world, the coping strategies I employ, and the things I strive to do or become.

 

Easter

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Picture

“The Incredulity of Saint Thomas” by Caravaggio

 

In my little corner of the world, I see a lot of suffering and death. I spend a lot more time contemplating the crucifixion and that silent Saturday when Jesus remained in the tomb than I ever used to in the West. It’s easier to believe in victory and new life when most of the people around you are doing well, and most of the stories you know turn out OK. It’s harder to keep faith in resurrection when most of the people around you aren’t doing OK; when they’re doing horrible things to each other and having horrible things done to them. Sometimes you lose track of the plot line when bad things happen one after another with no resolution and no catharsis, just banal disappointments that drip out like a leaky faucet.These days I often find myself walking through thin places between hope and despair, and the question is unresolved in my mind as to whether or not anything we do is worth it; whether all will be made well in the end. But there is room for all of that in faith—there has to be. Without that kind of desperation, what is the meaning of hope?

These last few days as I have contemplated the story of Jesus—his tragic death, his closest friends betraying and abandoning him, his anguished voice wondering aloud from the cross whether God is still with him in the midst of so much pain—something new has come into focus for me for the first time:

The resurrection was a surprise.

Everyone, everyone had given up on Jesus. His closest friends and followers whom he had literally spent years teaching and preparing for this moment. He had told them so many times that he would suffer and die, but that wouldn’t be the end, and they couldn’t grasp it. When he was tortured and killed by the state and the religious institution they were still fumbling around in the dark for what the kingdom meant and how it was possible that their fearless leader could have failed to accomplish his mission. He was dead and gone, and they thought it was over. The women mourned him and prepared spices to pay their last respects; the men returned to their fishing nets, disillusioned.

I think it was only their total despair which catalyzed such unbelievable joy when these disillusioned followers discovered Jesus alive, and it was this tangible experience of moving through death and loss to new life that made their faith so strong from that point onward. If they had confidently expected his triumphant return all along, then perhaps they wouldn’t have had a real sense of being delivered from any real danger or pain. Real suffering brings questions to the surface, and even to the lips of Jesus: “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”

So Jesus didn’t hold his friends’ doubt against them. Peter, poor Peter who had denied his best friend and teacher three times to save his own skin: Jesus cooks him breakfast on the beach, reinstates him, and entrusts him with the future of his movement (“On this rock I will build my church…”). There is resurrection in Peter’s own heart as Jesus forgives him and Peter learns to trust himself again. Later this former turncoat will be faithful to the point of death on a cross himself.

I often feel overwhelmed by the current state of the world, and I wonder how the kingdom can ever come. I find it hard to imagine history somehow rolling on from the present into heaven on earth. But I read this story and I realize that there is a place in the Easter narrative for the grief and confusion I so often feel. For Peter and the others, there was as little continuity between their experience of absolute loss on Friday and absolute joy on Sunday as there is between my current experience of the impoverished, suffering world as it is and the world as it will be when it is restored.

I am not lost. I am seeing Saturday. But Sunday morning will come, when I least expect it.

And it does come, even now—in those little signs of hope, tiny as mustard seeds, that spring up through the ground of despair. We see resurrection in our relationships when we offer forgiveness after conflict seems to have killed off affection and friendship, or when we creatively imagine new possibilities out of apparent failures. We catch a glimpse of the kingdom when we share a joyful meal with people of different languages, cultures, and religions, choosing to build community instead of walls. There is resurrection in my own heart when old wounds are bandaged and they heal. There is hope when we sow and sow and sow, and then one seed (maybe one in a hundred) bursts into life, we know not how.

I wrote last year about hope being a candle in the dark, never quite filling the room but never ceasing to burn either. Sometimes hope still feels like a lonely candle, but other times I get the sense that what I’m seeing is not just a small flame in the darkness, but rather slivers of a huge light behind everything that’s merely been painted over with black. Perhaps as we work to uncover more and more, we discover that the darkness, convincing as it may be, is what is surface-level and temporary, while the light is what is real and permanent and strong.

May we have the courage to suffer with Christ in the people around us.

May we have the faith to live in hope of new life,

the eyes to see it coming,

and the joy of helping to bring it into being.

May we practice resurrection in our lives.

The Bad News is Over

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          As a mentor of ours in New Zealand likes to say, “The Good News is that the bad news is over.” He says that to discover what Jesus’ message is for a given person or society, you first have to find out what the circumstances of that particular person or group are: their motivations, their hopes and fears, their problems, and their life experiences. What is it that is keeping them from God? Where are they in need of hope, or healing? The amazing thing about Jesus is that even while he proclaims universal truths about what it means to be human, he also approaches individual human beings with a personal message of truth for them. God is one, yet he meets each of us on different journeys and in different ways.

To the rich young ruler, the good news is that Jesus is inviting him to cast off all of the wealth, possessions, and comfort that have blocked him from experiencing real life with all of its joys and sorrows, and he lays before him the opportunity to commune with God through loving service and relationship with other people. To the impoverished paralytic by the side of the pool of Siloam who has never known comfort or riches, who has spent years waiting for someone more powerful than himself to rescue him, Jesus speaks words of healing and empowerment: “Get up and walk.”

To the Pharisees, who have spent their lives pursuing the spiritual disciplines of fasting, pious works, and thorough obedience to religious law, Jesus breaks through the delusion that they have achieved true relationship with God by denouncing heir false piety and pointing them toward the path that would rescue them from their particular bondage: “I desire mercy, not sacrifice.” His repeated, harsh rebukes of these arrogant men are actually a loving and persistent call for them to embrace the only change that could save them. But with those who are buried in shame and guilt rather than pride and apparent righteousness, Jesus takes a different tack. There is no rebuke from him for the woman caught in adultery. Jesus never snuffs out a smoldering wick or breaks a bruised reed, and he recognizes the poor in spirit when he sees them. In this case, it is the self-righteous accusers who are shamed out of following through with the punishment they had planned, and Jesus offers that fallen woman the surprise of mercy and a fresh start instead of the anger she expected from God and society alike.

Everyone’s journey is different. Some people come chasing after Jesus with a determined hope that refuses to be turned away—think of the blind man crying out to Jesus over the demands of the crowd for him to shut up, or the guys lowering their disabled friend down to Jesus through a hole they had dug in a stranger’s roof, because they were determined to get to Jesus in spite of the long line of people waiting outside. Other people are just minding their own business, or even hiding from Jesus, when he begins pursuing them: that’s the Samaritan woman at the well, who’s taken off guard by the man who strikes up conversation with her in spite of the taboos which divide their genders, their religions, and their races. That’s also Zacchaeus, who thinks he is inconspicuously observing Jesus from the safe distance of his tree branch when Jesus puts him on the spot and invites himself over for lunch.

And so it is with our journeys: different people, different seasons, different truths which Jesus speaks into our lives to guide us down the particular path which will lead each of us to God. I’m trying to get better about accepting that, so I can stop judging other people according to the truth that has been give to me. Like Peter on the beach with Jesus, hearing that the road ahead of him will include suffering and a sacrifice of his personal freedom, I turn to others and want to know, “What about these guys? Are they going to have to give up as much as I do to follow you?” And Jesus, still the same 2,000 years later, replies simply, “What is that to you? You, follow me.”

It is probably my growing awareness of the unique and personal nature of journeying with Jesus that has me so frustrated with the spiritual formulas, the moral rules, and the angry God of judgment that I so often hear proclaimed in churches as supposedly “good news”. This message of fear and judgment does nothing to cure the disease of the righteous religious people who already know the formulas and keep the rules, and it crushes the people who are already “bruised reeds”–the sexually broken, the abused, those who already hate themselves and expect rejection from God with equal intensity.

I think the Good News is love—in all of its universal truth and individual expression. Love was what Jesus offered to pharisees, paralytics, and prostituted women alike, but because he knew each of them down to the very core of their being, the path toward God he offered to each of them was unique. The good news for each of them, and for each of us, is that the bad news is over.

Taking to the streets

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          As we pulled up in the autorickshaw to the crowd of women waiting on the sidewalk, the clouds looked heavy with rain. I had come to this hastily-arranged rally with an Indian acquaintance of mine who organizes women’s groups in slums around the city, educating them about the resources available to them when they face violence in their homes and communities, and training them to work together to advocate for their rights and to support each other in making their communities an environment where women are respected, and where they are safe. She’s confident, well-spoken, and an abuse survivor herself—all of which makes her extremely good at what she does.

As the rain began to drizzle and then pour down on us, I looked around the crowd: some women in saris, others in salwar kameez suits, and a lot of women in full burqa—faces covered, but voices raised. Their courage was expressed in their presence at the rally in the pouring rain, some of them with babies and small children in tow. Their demands were written on the placards and banners they were going to carry through the flooded streets of downtown, all the way to the front gates of the parliament building. The rally was a protest against a slew of recent cases of violent rape across our city and our state in recent months, and the way that government and police alike were complicit in the terror by not only refusing to enforce laws to hold perpetrators responsible, but refusing to investigate cases and even refusing to file police reports when victims or their families turned up at police stations to seek help in the aftermath of these violent crimes.

In the height of the monsoon deluge, the group of protestors—mostly women and girls, but a handful of men and boys, too—stepped off the curb into the water and began their march. Our clothes were soaked, but everyone marched enthusiastically forward, lifting their arms and shouting together. As we neared our destination, a clutch of news photographers and cameramen appeared to snap photos and shoot footage of the event. Not far beyond them, however, the police also appeared in front of the crowd of protestors. I could see one officer alternately shouting something to the women at the front of the column, and then speaking into his walkie-talkie when those women defiantly shouted their slogans and continued moving forward. We soon saw what he must have been radioing about. Ahead of us, a larger group of police was barricading off the entire road. They were pushing the last section of metal fencing into place when the protesters reached them, grabbed the fence, and shoved it backward into the officers. Everyone poured in through the hole, and more of the barricade was knocked aside as we all made our way through. The police scrambled ahead to make their last-ditch attempt at keeping the women from reaching the parliament building. When we arrived, there was already a line of policemen blocking the gates, but that didn’t discourage the protestors from marching right up to them. Someone passed forward a microphone and a speaker which was held aloft as one woman announced why we were here and described the terrible situation of women in our society who can’t count on the protection of either their government or their police force.

A delegation of eight was allowed inside the building to present their demands (including a proposed amendment) to the chief minister; meanwhile, the rest of us waited outside. Police reinforcements had arrived and begun to surround the group. Then the army also arrived, and soon our group was surrounded on all sides by mustachioed men with bamboo sticks and guns. There were roughly a hundred protestors and a hundred police and army personnel, but this didn’t discourage many of the women from turning toward the men in uniform to talk about specific unresolved rape and murder cases over the microphone or to register their anger over police corruption and inaction.

I was impressed by the courage these women displayed, and by their solidarity with one another. The police and the army had been called up to intimidate them, to stop them… and yet here they were, facing off with power and holding their ground. Only time will tell what is to become of the demands the delegation presented to the government that day, but one thing is sure: that kind of courage and willingness to speak out about the violence against women that is routinely swept under the rug, ignored, or denied as something shameful or insignificant is definitely evidence that the tide is changing, however slowly.

Source: New feed

Is that enough?

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          I’ve been thinking a lot recently about the frailty of truth, love, and beauty in the world. Those are the underdogs, compared to the powerful, evil systems that run most things. I’ve been thinking a lot recently about why Jesus describes the Kingdom as a mustard plant, or yeast working its way through bread dough… slow, subtle change that eventually transforms the whole. I’ve been thinking about what it means to have faith. After journeying all this way with Him, I don’t think I could ever come to doubt the existence of God (been there, done that). But I’m coming to see that faith has to do with a lot more than believing in God’s existence or His power. For me, the essential question is whether, in a world of so much suffering, the Kingdom will actually come. Do I believe in resurrection? Not just Jesus’ resurrection, but the restoration of all things, the redemption of all that is evil and broken, the new creation growing out of the old? Do I believe that God has the final victory and will make all things well, even though I see so few signs of hope in the present?

I suppose that our decision to move into a slum was a huge act of faith in the first place. It was a choice to live in hope that God will bring transformation, and a declaration that we are so convinced of that inevitable change that we are willing to stay here until it happens. I know that as they struggle with hunger, sickness, abuse, and systemic injustice, a lot of our neighbors feel hopeless about life ever changing. But today it occurred to me that in Mark chapter 2 when that paralyzed man was lowered down to Jesus through the roof of a packed house in Palestine two thousand years ago, it was because of his friends’ faith that he was healed. Who knows whether he was feeling confident in that moment of whether he would be healed or not, but his friends were certainly taking some drastic action on the assumption that he would be.  Perhaps his own mind was ablaze with fear and skepticism, but that mustard seed of faith from his friends was enough. And I wonder if maybe that can be the kind of faith that we hold on our neighbors’ behalf here. If there are even just two people out of the thousands in our neighborhood who believe that transformation is possible, is that enough? Is that the mustard seed that can grow into a wild, vibrant mustard plant and take over the garden? I’m living on the assumption that it is.