Three years later and this pictured could have been snapped today (Although the Starbucks writing would probably not be in Thai).
Mom, I love you so much, and have missed you so much this year while in South Africa. I pray that your birthday is filled with laughter, hot chocolate, a good dinner, and the anticipation of spending good quality time together in 2 short weeks…I am proud to be your son!
I’ve had a hard couple of weeks wrapping up the Apprenticeship year here in Pretoria. Max’s injury, overall tiredness/exhaustion from the year, transition, thinking about future stuff, plus all the wrap-up stuff that comes with ending something and beginning new things. As I’ve written before, my God-complex comes out much more deeply during this time, and I struggle deeply with thinking that everything needs to be tied up in neat bows of great Chris Kamalski effort and sweat. Things have come to a head this week in realizing that I simply cannot do it all, and must lay down many things.
But the combination of celebrating the engagement of good friends, cliff jumping into natural rock water pools this afternoon, watching TV, finally starting my heart project in a deep way (editing photos is fun, if tedious!), quality time hanging out with Tony Cermak just a few days before he leaves, and a silly free Matt Wertz cd that I downloaded this week are picking up my mood. I took no medicine, haven’t ‘prayed,’ or really done anything other than found myself (grudgingly at first) enjoying the past several hours.
Could the mind actually have a much deeper hold on our collective well-being than we give it credit as having? I feel like someone just slipped me a placebo pill…and I’ve woken up again to laughter, joy, and simple things. Breathing a huge sigh of relief, I’m convinced again that Christ holds all things in his hand (Col 1:17), and that…
…everything might actually work out in some sort of fashion I will call good at some point in my future.
PSALM 131 (NLT)
1 Lord, my heart is not proud; my eyes are not haughty. I don’t concern myself with matters too great or too awesome for me to grasp. 2 Instead, I have calmed and quieted myself, like a weaned child who no longer cries for its mother’s milk. Yes, like a weaned child is my soul within me. 3 O Israel, put your hope in the Lord— now and always.
The Scriptures cut to the core if you let them….sheesh!
A clip from my latest (last?) post on our Pangani community blog:
HARROWING [by Parker Palmer]
‘The plow has savaged this sweet field
Misshapen clods of earth kicked up
Rocks and twisted roots exposed to view
Last year’s growth demolished by the blade.
I have plowed my life this way
Turned over a whole history
Looking for the roots of what went wrong
Until my face is ravaged, furrowed, scarred.Enough. The job is done.
Whatever’s been uprooted, let it be
Seedbed for the growing that’s to come.
I plowed to unearth last year’s reasons–
The farmer plants to plant a greening season.”So much has changed in the past 9 months of growth. I am uprooted in ways beyond my intellectual, emotional, even guttural ability to understand. I am becoming a different sort of person: richer, fuller, clarified. Paradoxically however, the seeds of this growth have happened through confusion, isolation as I am confronted with my cultural perspectives, and a gentle uncovering of my hypocrisy as I live within the mirror that is intentional community.
Two crazy notes about Sunday (November 1st) before a brief realization that is developing in my heart as we live our last few weeks together as a community during this Apprenticeship year:
As you can likely imagine, life has cranked up a few levels on the crazy-meter these past few weeks, and upon listening to everyone describing what is in front of them in this short window of time that we have left, there is a collective sense that we are all barely treading water, as well as attempting the impossible in terms of the momentous ‘To-Do Lists’ staring back at us. This has led to a series of breakdowns, desiring to withdraw, and fighting against the inevitable grieving process that comes with any sort of transition. The major ‘A-Ha!’ that I’ve awakened to this week is the simple realization that
I AM NOT GOD.
Oh how I seek to be God-like whenever I am faced with a transitionary moment, whether it is finally seeking to catch up on emails or clean my room prior to vacation, or to finish every project that I’ve had in the back of my mind that will allow me to say goodbye to everyone well, or to set up these next few months at home in California in a way in which I can meet the needs of every friend and family member whom I’ve been apart from this past year.
This desire to be God-like is actually not like God, I have to admit. I cannot be all things to all people, particularly as I am faced with the emotional turmoil of leaving! To quote the Simon & Garfunkel song ‘The Only Living Boy In New York,’ “Half of the time we’re gone but we don’t know where, we don’t know where.”
May we be present to what we can–what we cannot–what we should–what we should not be about, particularly in seasons of grief and leaving.
Colletta Cole rambled off these words as an aside yesterday during our morning conversation, and they have settled themselves in my heart in the past 24 hours, to the point that they are becoming prayer-like in their meaning to me at this point. Don’t you, like me and most other normal people, stumble through most of our days, trying our best to be awake and alive to the demands set before us each day, generally seeking to do good (albeit, some days, more pure evil!), to love people, to build and enlarge goodness as our world is slowly restored? And yet distractions, honest questions, To-Do Lists, normal life responsibilities, let alone the good/better/best things that we fill our days with, often overwhelm any sense of being truly alive, living in freedom, centering ourselves to “will the one thing” (Thanks, Soren Kiekagaard for that brilliant thought) more than any other.
In fact, doesn’t the thick nature of my run-on paragraph above reflect the overcrowded nature of your heart, the same as it does mine?
May we live open, alive, centered, slow, responsive, loving lives today. May your heart be enlarged to respond to the wooing call of the Spirit who dwells in you–nay, in all things!–and may you heed those whispers. I am praying for you to join me in living alive this day…
How do you synthesize a year into 6 images? Bryan Ward asked us to reflect upon this impossible feat this morning in our Conversation, and then gave us an hour to pick a person, a thought, or an image (Of course I chose images!) to symbolize the year. It was a surprisingly difficult, yet meaningful task for me to complete! Much could be written about these images, and the stories behind the stories that the photos themselves tell, but that can come later. This is, in fact, a series dedicated to letting images tell the stories that words usually convey!
ORIENTATION
Our crew: A unique group of creative individuals who have grown into family this year.
LISTENING
Pressing in to hear the voice of God in culture, we visited Huis Judea, an organization working with a poor Afrikaner community in Pretoria.
SUBMERGING
3 days submerging in Soshanguve: A radically slow life of walking and sitting with the guys.
INVITING
An invitation for creative imagery (always within me) to ooze out.
CONTENDING
Contending for the hearts of my Hospice Care Workers through a fun photo shoot. Petunia Kabongo killing it.
CONTENDING, PART II
The best part of the Contending Posture.
IMAGINING
Meet your Imagination. It comes and goes, but you can always invite it back for a stay.
My latest (bullet-point) musing from metamorphablog.com.
Any thoughts?
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