my talk last night at iv

The total lack of blogging is not because I was actually writing this talk but because I was feeling guilty about not writing it and feeling I couldn't very well blog when I should be writing it. etc. etc. Anyway, here's the audio, which is vaguely different than the text here. And also, I said out loud, "Revelation Chapter One" when I obviously meant "Twenty-One". Have a great weekend!

Citizenship in the Kingdom of Heaven

I was tasked tonight to speak about citizenship in the kingdom of God, or the kingdom of Heaven. The word 'kingdom' is kind of arcane in this age. We live in an age of republics, democracies and political states. But we do understand the idea of citizenship. Citizenship comes with rights and responsibilities—and place, belonging in a definable, visible, geographical place.But it is more than that, isn’t it. Citizenship is more than a passport, or where you’re from. It is a legal status, certainly, but en more, it is a matter of identity and of the heart.

I grew up very far away from this city of Binghamton, as probably most of you have. My parents are American and I hold an American passport, but I was born in England and my earliest memories are of village life in Sub-Saharan Mali, West Africa a village far far away from the main road, whose name hearkens to the sound of a particular bird. My mom and dad were there to learn the language, write the language down, and begin to translate the bible—the scriptures of the old and new testament—into that language. It’s been a life's work for them. My dad is finally, after thirty plus years, ready to publish a dictionary of this language, AND in the last few years, the New Testament was completed and dedicated. 

Now, you might be able to imagine, I am about as white as it comes. I was the only child that looked like me for at least 50 kilometers.I grew up in an in between space. Some people call it a third culture. I'm clearly not from Mali. And this visible difference buys me a lot of grace. I can say the greetings wrong, I can neglect to reciprocate a gift, I can give the wrong number of cola nuts to the village elder,and everyone cuts me some slack because I am a 'stranger', I am an alien. But of course, I try not to make mistakes, and when I do I apologize a whole lot and try to fix it. 

But even though I am a stranger, Farakala is the place of my heart. When I think about where I want to spend all of eternity, both this life and the next, I look out the window of my house in the village, across the fields, up into the great vast African sky. When I imagine a perfect life it is one without electricity-where the lamps have to be filled and lit in the cool of the day.Where water is hauled up from the well, bucket by bucket, and stored in great cool clay jars. Of course, in this perfect life, I can do without pounding millet into flour all day and working hard in the fields, or grinding my own peanut butter, or loosing some of my children to malaria before they can walk. Life in Mali isn't all a fun happy picnic. But it is the place of my heart.

So the big trauma for me, in my life, was in returning 'home' to the country of my citizenship, of my passport.I had to go to college. I had to come 'home' and I did. But, you might have noticed, there are some white people here in the States. Lots more than in Africa. And so I don't really stick out like a sore thumb here, and as a result, there is a lot less grace. Like getting on the bus for the first time and trying to figure out how to stick your money in the slot and being yelled at by the bus driver for taking too long.Or, even worse, giving up the bus and learning to drive. Making change with dollars and cents instead of francs. Walking into a grocery store and then walking right back out again because the lighting is unbelievable and you can't just buy cornflakes. Honestly, where are the cornflakes—carefully hidden behind some fancy honey oat nut crunch cereal. I feel like a fish out of water here, still sometimes, though, gasp, it’s been almost 20 years. I'm not from here. What is most strange and alien to me is that my children think this is the center of the world. When they think of the place of their heart, they think of the play place at Wegman's, or the parish hall at Church of the Good Shepherd, or our cruddy toy filled basement. At least right now. Who knows, as they grow, what will be the landscape that lies at the back of their mind's eye, filtering everything for beauty.

In other words, I'm not talking about what your passport says, as we circle around Citizenship in the Kingdom of Heaven, I am asking you to think about something deeper. Where is your allegiance, where is your loyalty, where is your heart? 

I think there should be a slide if someone could flash that up.I'm going to read out loud from the book of Hebrews, chapter 11.

By faith Abraham obeyed when he was called to go out to a place that he was to receive as an inheritance. And he went out, not knowing where he was going. 9 By faith he went to live in the land of promise, as in a foreign land, living in tents with Isaac and Jacob, heirs with him of the same promise. 10 For he was looking forward to the city that has foundations, whose designer and builder is God. ...13 These all died in faith, not having received the things promised, but having seen them and greeted them from afar, and having acknowledged that they were strangers and exiles on the earth. 14 For people who speak thus make it clear that they are seeking a homeland. 15 If they had been thinking of that land from which they had gone out, they would have had opportunity to return. 16 But as it is, they desire a better country, that is, a heavenly one. Therefore God is not ashamed to be called their God, for he has prepared for them a city.

We are going to have define the word 'faith', obviously, but let me pull out a couple of other names and phrases first, leaving 'faith' till last because it is so important.

Abraham, you might remember, heard from God, the true God, as distinct from all the other gods floating around in his day, and this God called him to an identity and purpose that was entirely distinct from anything else he had previously encountered. And the writer of this book tells us that he 'by faith' believed God and went away from his home, his family, his country, without knowing where he was going. This call of God, to this one man, Abraham, and the belief and trust in this call is so remarkable, so definitive, so immense, it sets up as a type throughout scripture. From Abraham you can trace through the centuries the call of God to both whole groups of people, but also to individuals to leave what is known and go somewhere else and do a particular task,live in a certain way, to be an alien and a stranger. You all, I am given to understand, this term are reading one of the most fascinating examples of this type, this call.

Daniel was captured, as nobility in Judah, he was particularly singled out to be taken to Babylon. And there he was to be fully integrated into the life of the court. Remembering, of course, that Babylon stands for, is a picture of all that is evil and wrong with the world. It is Babylon, in the book of Revelation, that stands for the pure evil of the Roman Empire, of the world as a whole. This is the Babylon into which Daniel and his friends were supposed to settle into and be comfortable and do work. And they do work. They are obedient. They learn the language and the law. They don't sit around moaning about how much they'd rather be somewhere else. But as you read through the whole book, you might get a sense that they are sort of always somewhere else. They eat and drink differently, they pray, they break the law strategically through peaceful civil disobedience. They dwell in but are not subsumed into Babylon. On the contrary, it is the King of Babylon is brought to his knees in humility and ruin—you haven't got that far yet. Daniel in particular retains his alien strangeness, his devotion to and love for God in this foreign land.

The writer of Hebrews tells us why Abraham and Daniel and so many others were willing to live this way. 

10 For he was looking forward to the city that has foundations, whose designer and builder is God. ...

This city is the opposite Babylon. It is described in the book of Revelation chapter 21, let me just read the description for you.

2 And I saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. 3 And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, “Behold, the dwelling place of God is with man. He will dwell with them, and they will be his people, and God himself will be with them as their God. 4 He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away.”

Sounds really wonderful, doesn't it? But Abraham and Daniel didn't have a picture of this city. The writer of Hebrews interprets their, and here's that special word, 'faith' for us, giving it furniture, making into a picture we can see and understand. Faith is the key into this city, it is the only door in. So what is faith? The writer of Hebrews says this, "Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen." 

The two key words here are not 'not seen' but rather 'assurance' and 'conviction'. Assurance is like a promise. If I assure you of something, I am convincing you that it is true, that you don't need to worry, that whatever it is will be carried out. Conviction is a deep and strong belief or knowledge of something. Your convictions are something you aren't lightly going to fling away, I hope. Many people read this verse by itself and think 'well, here I go, leaping off into an abyss, hope God's on the other side'. Other people look at Christians and think, 'what fools. There clearly isn't anything there, what a bad idea.’ The writers of Hebrew's anticipates both these reactions. Instead of trying to explain his terms, as I've just done, or reason with you,he begins a documentation of the life of people, the witness of actual human beings who had this faith. He's calling, if you will, his witnesses forward to make his case. People we know exist. People whose stories have withstood the test of good history and time. In fact, he brings forward one event in human history so huge it was never disputed in its time—the Exodus had more than 600,000 eyewitnesses—as evidence that what he's calling 'faith' doesn't mean a blind leap into a dark chasm. His claim is that ‘faith’, true Faith, is grounded in solid, assured truths—maybe not visible truths, but truths that have been verified and validated in this world both in our hearts and before our eyes. 

All these people have a conviction, an assurance of something we can't see. They were willing to leave everything they had, to travel far distances, in some cases to be killed or tortured, they were willing to forsake their own selves, everything for whatever this is. 

I suggest to you that 'whatever this is' is not a belief system or a powerful idea or guilt or a desire to do good.  Last week many of you were moved to good works, to compassion for others, to give so that others around the world might have water. And your speaker mentioned that some might give to just feel better for a time. That you might feel guilty, and so give. Or you might want to change the world, and so give. But that kind of motivation will only last a while before it becomes exhausting. The 'faith' described in this chapter of Hebrews always encompasses a whole life. Each person listed in the chapter didn’t do just one or two good things. Each whole life evidenced ‘faith’. Daniel, you will discover, never saw the land of Israel again. He died in Babylon, faithful. Abraham never went back to Ur of the Chaldeans. He died in a strange land, surrounded by strangers, hoping in a promise made to him that one day that land would belong to his children. 

This 'whatever it is' that causes a person to leave everything behind is actually a person. And that person is Jesus. Abraham, Moses, Daniel, all of them were living for a Person who they could not see but who is far more real and true than anything they could touch or taste or see. And because they saw him and loved him and lived in him, their lives looked like his. Jesus himself is the perfect and complete culmination of the type of Abraham and Daniel. He left the place of heart, that is, the Godhead—the perfect love of God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit—and put on a body, put on the clothing of flesh and limitations and frailty and came to this far distant land to be with us, to know us, to speak our language, to follow our laws and finally to be killed by us. He came to establish, that is to set up or create, what, in the church, we call the Kingdom of Heaven. 

The Kingdom of Heaven is the most real, the most powerful reality in the hearts and minds of those who love Jesus. It is the place where they live. It is always at the back of the mind's eye. It shapes everything. Now, of course, this kingdom isn't something you can visibly see—it has no walls, no boarders, no roads. In this way it is more powerful, more subversive than anything else on earth. It claims people, it spreads from one person to another to another, as the news about Jesus spreads, as individual people come to love him, he actually makes a home in them. When you come to love Jesus and give your whole self to him, he, through the Holy Spirit, lives in you. You become the boarders of his kingdom.Wherever you walk, there is the kingdom. Whatever you say, there is the kingdom. Whatever you do, it is done for the kingdom.

This places you in a somewhat awkward position, doesn't it? Because you visibly fit in here. No one can tell, just by looking at you, that you don't belong to this world, that your allegiance and love is fixed in a place and person no one can see—except maybe by the ridiculous beaming smile on your face. But they ought to be able to tell when you open your mouth, or choose your major, or whatever it is that you might be doing at that moment. Whatever you say or do, as a member of the Kingdom of Heaven will be to either tell the truth about that place and it’s King, or a lie. 

In other words, your frame of reference, the way that you see things, your point of view, your world view—there are a thousand ways to describe it—will be more and more shaped by that whom you love and the place you long for. If that place and person is Jesus than there’s a chance, over time, you will look like Daniel, or Abraham, or any other of the people listed in Hebrews 11. If that place and person is you, or something else in this world, your eyes will not be fixed in the far distance. You will not have a sure hope in someone that has always been and will always be. You will stumble over yourself and over the things of this life and meet with grief and destruction.

If Jesus is the place and person of your heart, though, all the things that you can’t see with your eyes now, you will one day see. The heavenly city that I read about in Revelation will be the place where everyone who loves Jesus will live. The thing about it, is that you can live there already. In Jesus you have the key to go in and live there, to get used to it, to learn about what it’s like and how life will be. I hope very much that if you’ve never met this person, Jesus, you will begin to look for him tonight, to talk to someone here about him to find out more. And for those of you who know and love him already, my hope is that you will fix your eyes on that far distant city and to let your words and actions and life be shaped by the King.

Prayer, if you have a moment

While Libya and Egypt apparently spiral down from bad to worse, and Japan continues to generate news and need, Ivory Coast is barely a blip on the screen. Its so interesting and horrible to review geography week after week (right now we're studying the whole continent of Africa) and put your pencil on a whole country quickly before the next name is called out, and have a whole array of actual places flash quickly through the mind's eye. And of course, actual people--people with  chaos overwhelming and with no possible end in sight.

Lord have mercy.

The Ancient Art of Letter Writing

I used to write long old fashioned letters by hand. Of course, when I first went to boarding school, at age 11, there was required letter home writing time. I vaguely remember this being Sunday, probably during interminable rest hour, certainly always the moment my Sunday headache set in. But in High School there was no time set aside and one wrote if one wanted to. I spent my free library times pouring out endless volumes of words, writing to each of my parents separately, to many friends scattered around the world, and sometimes to a cousin.

I think I was a pretty good letter writer. I could fill all four sides of the big long folded graph paper (I don't know how to describe it, you can't get it here in the US). I had plenty to complain about. My letters were desperately long and filled with sappy drama and emotion and longing.

I stumbled upon a stack of these letters the other day. I actually have them in a fancy leather trunk in my entry way. I glanced over them and felt sad at this lost 'art'. But not too sad. In many ways blogging is more difficult and therefore better. Whereas anyone can fill up four sides of paper with moaning and complaint in under an hour, blogging, good blogging (which I'm not pretending this is) should be focused, directed at an audience more difficult to define, and therefore have some unifying theme and purpose. Of course, the Internet is littered with long rambling letter like blog posts (some of them are by me) which say essentially nothing. But it is also full of excellent writing available for free, without the hassle of the United States Post Office, which, in Binghamton, is a hassle that defines the word hassle. Mailing a letter in Sikasso, Mali was easier.

Its not as if, in this technologically defined age, we've stopped communicating or lost anything, really. We've just redirected our efforts.

Light and Darkness: or an autobiographical interlude

I read this excellent post (please please go read it) yesterday and sat down to compose a comment. Very quickly, however, the enormity of what I wanted to try to say became too great for a simple comment and so I find I have to write a whole post of my own.

My very earliest recollections of life do not include electric light. I'm not sure how old I was when we moved to Farakala, but we lived next to the old village, before everyone moved to the road to be more 'modern'. Our house was a horse shoe-ish circle of six mud huts with thatch, joined by small passage ways so that you could go all through the house inside or cut through the court yard from one room to another. It wasn't a particularly well built house and besides being beset by termites on every side and in every crack, it eventually melted in the rain and we were forced to move.

The new house was half way between the old village and the new and was designed in the style of a french chateau. The foundation was sturdier, the walls straighter, the thatch thicker and I was older. No longer wanting to play in a pile of sand in the courtyard, or tie kittens on my back as if they were babies, I now participated in the rhythm of life to a greater degree, or at least as much as one can on holiday from boarding school.

There are several, as Jen at Conversion Diary calls them (haven't found the post though), hard stops to a life without electricity or running water. In the morning, water has to be brought in, preferably while the day is still cool. In the afternoon, it is too hot to go anywhere or do anything. And in the evening, the twilight period, the time between full sun and complete black, is only about 20 minutes. If you haven't filled the lamps in the morning or waning afternoon, you are racing against the light to fill them enough to carry you through the evening, and to light them. Once darkness has fallen, the deep quiet and deep darkness restrict movement and work.

But it was, and is, always my favorite time of day. It was so unlike my life now. We were never organized to cook supper before dark. There are too many things to do in the daylight hours, and cooking is perfectly achievable by lamp light. We never ate anything before 7:30. And then, baths were usually had, carrying water heated on the stove across the house to the bath hut, bathing by candle light. And then there was plenty of time to read. But you wouldn't want, certainly, to undertake a major cleaning project after dark, as I generally do here (I scrubbed the fridge until 10 o'clock last night and was fairly and completely exhausted after).

Visits could be had after dark--walking out,whether the moon is a sliver or full, the stars are bright enough, practically, to provide light, carrying with you a large stick and a lantern or flash light, remembering always to look down and keep to the path.

I'm getting all weepy as I write this because I miss it so much. Honestly, one of the biggest shocks to my system on moving to the US, besides the wonder of the grocery store and the overwhelming selection of toothpaste, was the unrelenting electric light in the evening. The absence of silence, the blaring light, the constant drone of computers and refrigerator and shouting of the dishwasher, all of it combines together to be psychologically wearing.

And, in my electric life now, though I have light enough to read and pray at any hour, I don't pray at night, much. We don't, as a family, sit together in candle light and sing the phos hilaron or pray, 'be our light in the darkness and defend us from all the terrors of the night', because we already have light, and we don't remember that there are terrors. We could, but we're busy up to the point of sleep.

It is a great loss. But also, my fridge is clean.

That Long Ago Trip to Kenya: Episode One, Visiting the Baby Elephants

We were toying with the idea of cleaning the house and then going to the library. However, as it is pouring rain it seemed better to waste time online looking at pictures of kittens and reading all the corrections to the Old Classical Conversations Foundations Guide and listening to this:

Finally it occurred to me to blog (did I mention the house needs cleaning?) and at the very least put up some of the very fine pictures we have of our recent trip to Kenya.

As is always the case, any time I visit my parents I come back in a better frame of mind, more grounded in reality, more cheerful, and, in this case, well able to put the grief and stress of the last six months behind me and focus on the present. I've been able to put back on the garment of contentment I once wore, and also look forward in delight and anticipation to this next baby, nameless though she continues.

I'm so grateful that we got to go and see the Anglican Church in Kenya first hand, and see NEGST, where my dad teaches, and see another part of such a vast continent. I'm embarrassed to say that I was surprised to find Kenya as recognizably African. I assumed it would be So Different from the the French Northwest. But it felt comfortable and homelike.

For this first installment, not in chronological order, I thought I'd indulge in pictures from the orphaned baby elephant reserve. There is a fixed time every day that the public can go and see these baby elephants have their large bottles of milk (baby formula to be exact, talk about expensive). The elephants are rescued from a variety of unhappy circumstances--falling in wells, death of the mother, falling into holes in a pipeline, wounded by hyenas. If I remember correctly, there were 19 elephants, way up from previous years because poaching is up.

This young lady delivered a fascinating and informative lecture about the elephants. As she talked, various baby elephants came for pats and to see if there was more to eat. She told us how the various elephants came to be there, and what their lives were like. For instance, baby elephants miss their mamas exceedingly and often cry through the night. They each have their own keeper who sleeps with them all night, feeds them, plays with them and generally lives with them all the time. All other human contact is very minimized so that they can be reintroduced into the wild. This process, once they are taken to the main reserve, can last anywhere from 2 to 6 or more years.



Along with all the baby elephants, this little orphaned Rhino came out to be acclaimed and patted by all. He was very interested in all the people and everyone got to touch him. We, foolishly, waited till he had been lathered in mud before we got our turn.

Home again, Home again...

Elphine is dropping off in the middle of her Bible Story. Romulus is talking loudly and squeezing drops of water out of a bottle onto his tummy. Alouicious is wiggling. Gladys is climbing on and off my lap. She's been throwing up all afternoon. In other words, we're all back in one place cozily together and SO GRATEFUL

1. That we traveled safely and that all the airplanes were sound and secure.
2. That we got to go and be with my mom at such a moment.
3. That so many of you took such lovely care of Matt and the boys (meals, a spotless house, many fun outings for the boys).
4. That we got to have a first hand encounter with the Anglican Church in Kenya and meet so many people who have prayed so much for us.
5. That my parents are this moment in the air and coming to be with us and that my mom is able to take a full breath through her own artery, 40 percent open.

Here comes the baby. This post will have to continue at a later moment.

Monday Morning

It is gray and threatening to rain and only 9 in the morning. Gladys drug me out of bed at what seemed like the middle of the night, but was really 6am, screaming for milk and kicking me or something. She was unwell over the weekend. She caught some throwing up bug and prevented us, except for her grandfather, from attending St. Francis Sunday morning. After being up with her most of the night, I did, however, manage to pull myself enough together to go downtown with my dad to All Saints Anglican Cathedral for the farewell service of Archbishop Nzimbi. Strangely and unaccountably, we ended up in the front row of the clergy (a very nice lady deacon from St. Francis lent me her extra vestments so that I could join in the procession) right next to the altar and able to see everything. It was extremely grand and wonderful. The organ alone takes church music to another realm. And the cathedral is beautiful. I am hoping to go back later in the week especially to take pictures of the bougainvillea such the like I have never seen before.

Saturday we did get to meet Bishop Atwood who is just as fascinating as I imagined him to be. My dad made chocolate chip cookies and we drank copious amounts of tea (at least I did) and talked for two hours. I'm not going to say anymore because it turns out the good bishop reads this blog regularly, and so I intend from henceforth only to be perfectly good.

Today I am hoping maybe we can check out the children's library and learn about something fascinating.

Thursday Evening

In another few minutes I need to go my gasping way back from the office to the house where sits my mother Very happy to be home, and breathing much more freely than I (we are up several 1000 feet and I am not used to it, also, this baby just seems really fat and big, even though it is apparently still only a few ounces). She has an artery now that blood can move all the way through. As the neighbor informed her this afternoon, in England 40% is a passing grade. It may not be in the US, but in this case, its well more than it was on Tuesday, and we are so so grateful, both that the doctors succeeded, when they felt dubious that that would be the case, and that she's home so soon. To open the artery more than 40%, she will require a diamond bit drill and a doctor to handle it, neither of which exist here in Kenya at this time. Indeed, the ability to do what they did this week is very new and special, and the doctor himself recently arrived from being trained in Dallas. So all things come together at the right time, and God is very good.

The girls and I are doing very well. For one thing, we're so happy to be here with my parents and see where they have lived the last four years. And for another, we are finally on the right hour, and so are not crying and fussing all the time. I've been taking pictures constantly, and will try to get them off my camera when I gather my wits. We hope to see the orphaned baby elephant reserve and Rift Valley Academy, and E wants Most of all to go back to the grocery store where they have child sized carts and she pushed her own. I am struggling to get my phone to take a SIM card so that I can text, which is what EVERYbody does here ('why don't you text?' my mother asked, 'I text') because its cheaper.

This Sunday, providentially, we will get to go to the Cathedral and see the goodbye service for Archbishop Nzimbi, and there are rumors that we will get to meet the Famous Bishop Atwood, about whom I have heard so much but have never yet laid my eyes on. AND there are so many children lined up to play and a library to go to, that we won't have a moment's peace as long as we are here.

An Update

Anne called with an update on her mother and said I could pass on what she told me. I am going to quote her aunt's summary since she seems to have a handle on things:

Joyce is resting in Intensive Care in the hospital, and will stay there a few days for observation. They succeeded in unblocking the artery (which had been completely blocked), but one place they were only able to unblock to about 40%. So overall, the procedure was "partially successful". The procedure was "very complicated", and Joyce was in the surgery for about 4.5 hours.

Thank you for your prayers and please do continue to pray for Joyce's full recovery

Safely in Nairobi

Anne has arrived in Nairobi safely and she asked that I update her blog. Here is an abbreviated version of the note she sent yesterday morning:

We had a fairly smooth trip. I'm exhausted because the girls didn't sleep at all the 12 hours to Dubai and then did sleep from there to Nairobi, but I was so uncomfortable that I didn't sleep much. So I'm running on empty.

My parents house is lovely. I will be able to help cook and do school and not be too exhausted but still be a help, I think. My mom looks good, but she really does get breathless going up the stairs. She seems basically cheerful. We'll all go to the hospital tomorrow to hear what the doctor has to say and then next week everything gets going.

While I was dozing in and out on the plane I kept thinking I heard Rowan pretending to be a horse. It turned out to be some kid just crying but it was exactly the same sound he makes.

The girls are loaded up with cake and running around the garden playing with the dog and basically we're all gearing up for next week.

Thank you for all of your prayers...

Anne

Nostalgie

I drove ten hours on Saturday. We girls managed to get ourselves in the car and on the road a 6:30am and had a comfortable and companionable ride down to Bethesda Maryland with only one stop. And thanks to a magical and amazing device known as a GPS we didn't get lost (Thanks Kellie, I'm about to go out and pick you all the flowers out of my garden because I am So Grateful).

Seriously Tangential Opinion Regarding the GPS:
The GPS thing is so cool but in my immortal soul, it worries me who might be watching me from the satellite. I haven't actually watched any of those movies about trying to find people by lazering their eyes or whatever, but I've seen the previews. Weird. Being basically anti government, I just don't want people knowing where I am all the time. Also, I disagreed with the interesting sardonic (Kellie's term) British lady's decision to send me on the PA turnpike and so I disobeyed her, flinging her into a time to 'recalculating' and, I think, probably making her angry. And, not really believing, in my soul, that she could be Always Right, I frequently called Matt to have him check the map to see if she was lying to me, which, of course, she wasn't.

We arrived in the blazing heat and went through the cool and peaceful maze of Fourth Presbyterian, looking for my friend Polly, who was there, calm as a cucumber, as always, having little flowers stuck into her hair. We cooled down and ate all the food we'd brought with us and then E dressed herself and her Doll.

It is earth shattering, seeing an old (well, neither of us are old, we're both ridiculously young) friend, in a new context, and observing how all the normal bits of yourself and your situation that you took for granted before, are completely absent now. Back in the bad old days, Polly and I inhabited the end room in our dorm, with two other people I love very much but who are off now busy doing other things. In a dorm with 20 or so girls, only the two ends accommodated four, and when you got to be a junior or senior, you could choose these rooms over and over (inciting envy and gnashing of teeth in the lower classes). Polly was so cool (still is)-languid, steady, unaffected by the thousands of grievances the other three of us indulged in daily. By virtue of being her friend, I got to sit at the fringes of the 'cool' crowd at school (before they all got expelled, naturally), basking in the company of people totally out of my league. But it wasn't just the people, or Polly, or walking nonchalantly and unaffectedly to meals, or class, or the park (unaffectedly, of course, being a complete Lie. Everything Mattered, the pace, the way your shirt was tucked, your expression, the quality of your tan, the number of pimples you had so carefully covered over, the humidity and its affect on your hair, your immortal Soul, Everything.) It was the cracks on the ceiling in that room, the color of the walls, the cool cement floor when everything else was energy siphoning hot, the box of music under Polly's bed, my Tea Pot, Two Cups and Jar of Peanut Butter carefully organized at the back of the cupboard, watching Polly spend three minutes studying and getting all impeccable marks, the small tear in the screen into which boys, walking stealthily by, shoved notes promising undying affection and love.

So Polly is married now, and may her new husband (wonderful as he may be) endeavor to deserve her.
Me with Polly, looking, as I felt through most of high school, short. Also, I neglected the use of Eye Enhancing Make Up because my eyes have been touchy and sore.

On Being Anglican Or Why I’m Thinking Seriously about Home schooling Again Or Why This Blog is Called ‘Undercurrent of Hostility’

It’s that time of year: Time to figure out what on earth to do this year with the kiddos to educate them and bring a swift end to their barbaric and ignorant ways.

E, all this year, has been in a wonderful and nice Baptist school in a small class with an excellent teacher (you like all my superlatives? Too tired to leave them out). But, well, it’s a super long bus ride for her every day. And she’s gaining that assured Baptist feel to her. In other words, she’s getting all the great Baptist theology with none of the sensibility. And yesterday she came home over tired and weepy from missing us (and, to be frank, she’s anxious about us loosing the house and the church. Being an obsessive little creature, even though we don’t really talk about it and its not playing a role in our daily lives, she’s chewing on this possibility like a dog with a bone).

Meanwhile, for A, we’ve been considering a very wonderful Catholic school with a lovely preschool teacher and a nice bright room and lots of structure. There he would get none of the theology we like and all of the sensibility.

So we’re applying everywhere and praying hard and doing every kind of research. And I’ve been thinking quietly to myself about Why I’m Anglican, that small sub-slice of Christianity.

Because truly and honestly, I couldn’t possibly be Catholic, or Baptist. For all the beauty of the Catholic Church and all the things it Does Right, I think it is fundamentally and inescapably wrong on the Matter of Salvation and the Work of Jesus. The cry of the Reformation is in my bones. On the other hand, the bare plain assured approach to the Word and “Sacraments” (the approach being that there are none) in the Baptist Church leaves me hallow and hungry.

In boarding school, rotten rebel that I was, I refused to carry my Bible to church, even though it was required, and instead carried my prayer book (which looked sort of like a Bible, though suspect) and read the 39 articles during the sermon. And when I had to write, in Bible Class, an essay on what comprises a church, I was seriously marked down for naming my church after a saint, instead of after the Bible or First Street, or whatever. Meanwhile my mom and dad would visit every few months and fuel the fire of my small hostility, bolstering my resolve in Being Anglican against all odds. It was the sweetest and most satisfying rebellion I could have undertaken.

But then I came back to America and discovered a church hollowed out and empty. All kinds of sensibility, love for the hymns, all the identity of being “Anglican”, but there was nothing no substance, no theology, no Bible, no belief.

So I have found myself, without meaning to, in opposition to various Institutions—my boarding school, the Episcopal Church—ok so only two. But I am now, more than ever, in deep opposition to the idea of my children not knowing Jesus. And I don’t want to send them to any place that will make it difficult for them to know God, a place that will put up stumbling blocks to their salvation. So I’m circling back to the idea of keeping them home and teaching them Latin.

But for today we continue to watch and pray and rejoice with those who are rejoicing.

More from Farakala

This set includes a little Fetish House, village girls on a donkey, someone copying our house with blue shutters, and a Big RainStorm

Lying around feeling yucky looking through old pictures

Instead of doing all the things I planned today, I finally dealt with the piles of cds lying around my desk. The first picture is my house in Farakala, Mali where I grew up. Isn't it comforting looking? The second is a banner Good Shepherd made for us to give to the church in Farakala. The third is the banner hanging over Matt while he waits to preach one of the Sundays we were there. The fourth is the new church that's been built since I grew up.

Oh the glories of RCI. Matt received this into his inbox this morning. Absolutely made my day.


kelvine kadila
Christian Pentecostal Mission Hqters,
Rue de Triechville,
Abidjan,Ivory coast.
West Africa.

Dear ,
Permit us to inform you that after reading your address in the internet. I became interested in disclosing every thing about myself to you. I am interested in a long term business relationship with you.We are kelvine and.......................

Tragic

The people who died in this horrible fire were Malian. Welcome to America. "....Soumara rushed to the building in his livery cab, arriving to see his children trapped inside but unable to help them. Five children from another family perished in the blaze while their father was visiting their homeland of Mali in western Africa.
Mousa Majassa, an official of the New York-based High Council for Malians Living Abroad, was headed back to New York after receiving the grim news that nearly half of his 11 children were dead, said council representative Bourema Niambele......Mali, one of the world's poorest countries, has a quarter of its nationals abroad and thousands have risked a sea journey to smuggle themselves into Europe.
David Robinson, who lives in the neighborhood, said the victims seemed to be a close-knit group. "The kids were always playing, either in the yard of their home or on the block with water guns and scooters."