-sharing reflections on what I've heard and am hearing, learned and am learning,
from voices in the Holy Land, the USA, and Rwanda-



Tuesday, August 1, 2017

Notebook Entry: 6.8.17 (August Newsletter)

I got up on the wrong side of the bed this morning. No idea why, I imagine it happens like that to all of us once in awhile. All morning I took deep breaths each time irritation reared its ugly head, trying my best to let it go. By the afternoon I was pretty even-keeled, albeit not terribly energetic.

I walked up the steep road to the office and sat in the sanctuary of the Kigali Parish, waiting for my meeting with the Bishop of the Lutheran Church of Rwanda (LCR). I've learned that most people who come to the office for meetings first sit in the sanctuary (which also serves as the waiting room) for a time of prayer. I have begun that practice as well. Over the past few years, my personal prayer posture has begun to take the form of a basketball player anxiously sitting on the bench, hunched over with elbows on knees, hands folded out front, head bowed in deep concentration, ready for game time. Recently, a portion of my prayers have included asking God for guidance, courage, strength, wisdom, and daily pep-talks as I enter the busy months ahead. 

Today, however, something changed in both my prayer and my posture. A word popped out of my lips before I could even give it a second thought: joy. "God, grant me joy."

Something twisted inside of me. Joy!? Huh!? Why?! Joy isn't typically what wins basketball games. And regardless, this was the kind of day where I didn't really have much to say to joy. It was definitely not a player in the starting line-up.

But as I sat up, looked around the sanctuary, and opened my Bible, it was not diligent determination or intense focus that came my way. Rather, joy began to flood my senses. And as it did, I thought about the YAGM who served in Rwanda and those who will soon arrive. I thought about the communities of the LCR I have yet to meet and the possibilities that lie ahead. I thought about the communities who have prepared me for such a ministry as this. I thought about the wonders of God's crazy beautiful and chaotic creation.

And it was with this unbridled sense of joy washing over me that I entered the meeting space. Bishop Mugabo and I shared in exciting conversation, brainstorming about our work together and beginning preparations for the six YAGM preparing to come to Rwanda in late August. We spoke of new opportunities for the coming years and reflected on the months of work ahead. In the midst of our diligent focus, joy permeated the room and our meeting time ended with prayers of supplication and thanksgiving.

Ask me how this all transpired and I'll be the first to tell you, it was by no means of my own. The Spirit intercedes for us with joy too great for words to express.

Today, I was humbled to receive a wellspring of grace and enthusiasm at a moment when my grumpy, dried-up bones needed it most. Today, I give God thanks for the intercessions of the Holy Spirit. And today I'm reminded once again that I am a beloved (even when I'm irritable) child of God, and but one part of a much larger body of Christ in the world. And that, I believe, is grace, mercy, peace, and joy come down.

haven't stopped listening

It's been years since my last update. Between my last reflection on "home" (written in May 2012) and now, I have been claimed by three more communities: Chicago, Milwaukee, and Jerusalem. For five years, these places continued to torrentially shower down on me experiences of grace, visions of hardship, moments of solidarity, and awakenings to the work of justice, shaping and forming me in ways (some painful and others joy-filled) that I could not have imagined when I published that last post.

Honestly, I imagined coming back to write here time and time again, but my bones became weary and my mind often could not find the right words to convey what I was learning, unlearning, and relearning about myself, my country, the Church, and our world. I fought to find myself in the chaos of it all, struggling with severe anxiety and entering a new arena of self-examination. In that time, deeply loved friends and companions came into my life. Most everyone even stuck around. And while these years simultaneously opened my eyes wider to my own needs and to even more of the deep needs of the world, I thank God for them. For out of them I have been called to proclaim that which my year in Palestine first set on my heart: God's abundant hope.

Over the last five years, I have completed my studies at the Lutheran School of Theology at Chicago and was just ordained into my first call. I sit here in Kigali in what has quickly become my new home. Ask me how the past five years led me to this place in particular and I can say definitively, "Only God knows." I will serve as a missionary pastor within the Lutheran Church of Rwanda, a relatively new (23-year-old) church body, and the country coordinator for the Young Adults in Global Mission program in Rwanda. (Notice that this is the same program that set the stage for this blog to begin seven years ago as I prepared to serve in Jerusalem/West Bank.)

Slowly, the words that evaded me for so long--those from all of the experiences I encountered since my last blog on this page--are coming my way. Words about pilgrimage, seminary discoveries, war, disappointments, anxiety, mental illness, police brutality, my own internalized racism (and other -isms), unlearning that racism (and other -isms), being an accomplice in the work for racial justice, recognizing the work and the love of friendship, claiming my whole self, letting go of love lost, understanding power and privilege, analyzing power and using it wisely, advocating in deed and word, opening my eyes to Jesus in the streets, learning what praise really is, and so much more.

I pray the words continue to come to me, that I might begin breaking through the silence of this page to share what I've been hearing, to provoke thought and prayer, and to proclaim, above all, the hope that is alive and kicking despite the things in our lives that try to convince us otherwise. Some of what I post will be cross-posted between my Facebook and Instagram, some will be from Newsletters I will write quarterly, and some will find a home here only. Check-in when you can. Share your thoughts when you have them. And may the grace and peace of God be with you now and always.