embracing a new thing

I can't lie. The last few weeks have been tough for a lot of reasons--which would take hours to share--and I have cried a lot. A few brave and loving souls have been there to share my worst moments with me and for that I am so grateful. What is the meaning of friendship, if not to bear one another's burdens?

But I don't want to write about that. I want to write about what I've learned. I've learned that maybe I expect too much of some people. I've learned that the only way I know how to live is transparently. I've learned that I can't share all of my heart with everyone, but I CAN share it with some people--and it will be embraced, in all its grittiness. And I've learned that the darkness is much easier to bear when I do.

The darkness is there. It competes with the light and joy for control of my heart. But it doesn't win. It will not win. I've been reminded this week--though the wise words of some old souls-- that the Light wins. Love and hope and peace and justice and kindness and mercy win. And even when the shadows threaten to overwhelm me, the work of God will still be revealed in my life.

Yesterday I read these words--and then they appeared on a church billboard across the street from my house. "Behold, I am doing a new thing; it springs up, do you not perceive it?" I think it is the message I need to hear in this season.

And so, I will rejoice. I will rejoice despite my pain--which lingers in the shadows like a scar that won't quite heal. And I will embrace the new thing that God is doing in my heart, even if I don't understand it or can't see it. And, in my own imperfect way, I will seek to--as Heatherlyn sang last night--be the love.

for a friend

Over the course of my time in Nicaragua, I heard numerous stories from a wide range of people. With the Revolution (1979) and the Contra War (1982-1990) still fresh in everyone's mind, it wasn't hard to uncover the wounds, the deep violence inflicted by the dictator (Somoza). Before long, though, it also became clear that for other sectors of Nicaragua society, the rise of the Sandinistas had brought its own challenges. While the Sandinista program ostensibly did a lot of good for marginalized sectors of the population (through literacy campaigns, improved health care access, etc), in the process many hard-working people (not only the extremely wealthy, but also the middle class) also lost jobs and/or land. The later economic scarcity and recruitment of young men for battles in the mountains (from which many never came home) that ensued during the Contra period (obviously not the fault of the rojinegros, but rather the US intervention) led more than one Nicaraguan (including taxi drivers, gardeners, and people of all economic levels) to tell me frankly: "Things were better under Somoza!"

During this period, many people with the option to leave did so--whether to avoid sending their sons off to war or to pursue new economic opportunities elsewhere, as their country became increasingly torn apart by war. Beyond the politics of their departures, there were deeply personal and emotional reasons behind these decisions--a desire to protect their children and their families, a desire to work, to use the skills provided by their education, to survive what must have surely seemed like the complete destruction of their beloved country.

I always listened to these stories with a lump in my throat. Hearing so many diverse voices drove home the point that for every official political event that goes into the history books, there are myriad personal consequences that can never been seen or understood just by reading the "facts." The same event can produce a variety of effects for different people in a society. At the end of the day, therefore, any attempt by analysts or scholars to coldly ("objectively") interpret political events and policies can never capture the fullness or intensity of the reality that is lived by those in that context in the moment.

In the course of a few hours this week, I forgot this last truth, long ago learned and filed away in the recesses of my mind. In my exuberant desire to offer an academic opinion of a political situation far from my own, I forgot that the political is first of all personal. I forgot that more than a scholar, I am a human being. I was quick to offer analysis when all that was called for was the listening and sympathetic ear of a friend.

I feel humbled and contrite. What good is all the knowledge of the world without love?

"If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal." -1 Corinthians 13:1