Juba, South Sudan

August 31st, 2013

25 C/ 77 F

In the silence of only the lights and insects humming, alone here in the women's house of the World Relief compound, there's plenty of time to think.  

The only TV station I can get in English is a Chinese News syndicate - CCTV - and as anthropologically interesting as it is to consider the Chinese perspective on the US discussions of interventions in Syria and to wonder if the US would ever bother to produce a national TV station in Chinese (no, likely not) - I don't want to see any more images of war today, to think about the grief and displacement that it has on people's lives. Irhamni, ya'rab; forgive me, oh Lord.

Alternately, I could be reading "The Last Lion" - an over 1000 page biography of Winston Churchill: but the murkiness of life's current conflicts and my own ambivalence of how I fit into all of that make me even more intimidated by the Defender of the Realm than previously.  He seems too loftily confident, driven by conviction and purpose that I can only wish I had, so rather than berate myself I let the book sit, untouched.  I suppose I'll just choose mediocrity and scroll through my FB mini feed and read blog posts instead then today.

Meanwhile, South Sudan is quietly limping along.  Nothing bold and demonstrative - even the fact that the president dismissed much of his cabinet last month didn't make many international headlines - but the infrastructure challenges, the illiteracy, the lack of viable economic options, the corruption, and the periodic flooding and ethnic conflicts on an already stretched social fabric; those are the things that make her limp.  

But there are positive signs - construction is going on everywhere in Juba, and investors are slowly coming, the development agencies setting up camp to stay for a while (shhh, cynics!), and the President has appointed the Archbishop of the Episcopal Church and several other leaders to chair the National Peace and Reconciliation Commission.

At the moment, I'm somewhat befuddled at where to start - that is, what my reaction to all of this should be.  The gnawingly obvious is that ball and chain inbox; with the boomerang impact of generating more email the moment you "address" it.  Then there's investing time with other staff, old friends, and others l've met here -- hard to know how much to do when I'm normally based in the US, but still a meaningful opportunity.  Lastly there's the quiet pull of solitude: read, grieve, pray, think, dream.... remember to hope.  

To hope for my own life.  To hope for this city and country.  

Sure, that requires disbelieving the over-analytic parts of my brain - as Graham Greene says in The Power and the Glory: "Hope is an instinct only the reasoning human mind can kill." - Animals, he contrasts, never loose hope as long as they are alive another day. It's no good trying to sit and think myself to clarity and confidence with all the nuances and historical counter-evidence I could drudge up.  

As I enter into quietness and admit to myself that there is a battle to remain hopeful, I'm reminded of the words in 1st Timothy (1:18-19) - "Timothy, my son, I am giving you this command in keeping with the prophecies once made about you, so that by recalling them you may fight the battle well, holding on to faith and a good conscience, which some have rejected and so have suffered shipwreck with regard to the faith." (Italics added). 

So the trick out of this paralysis about how to go forward is to start by remembering.  I'm working these days on remembering the basic truths of the gospel, and remembering where I've come from and what I'm passionate about.  I'm mulling over words that people have challenged, inspired, and blessed me with; truths spoken into and over me. To remember things that I've seen, both those that indicate current progress and then the brief ideas for what could yet be.  

This is the importance of the stones of remembrance.  We forget.  And when we forget, instead we turn to our own idols.  Irhamni, ya'rab.  

Recall the truths, my friends, and fight the battle well - in these days we and world all need a little more hope!  

Meekness for a hard heart

Meekness is a word that we don't use much today, we more often substitute it for the word 'gentleness'. Yet I think it is an irresistible quality whenever I see it - generally in old people who have spent their life obedient to the Lord's laws of love - a patience, quietness, trust, confidence - rolled into an overall spirit of softness, or rather, meekness.

Lately, as it is the spirit of Advent, where it is right to let the light of truth penetrate our hearts as we remember and anticipate the King of Heaven who has come and is coming again, I've been thinking about how little meekness I emanate right now. Instead my heart is impatient and agitated, bordering on bitterness and despair - and those feelings creep into my heart like an invasive ivy vine and suffocate and harden the feelings at my core.

How does one cultivate meekness then? My only insight is that it must be a discipline - regularly cutting back the undergrowth of impatience and petty anger and shining truth into those areas where I'm erecting elaborate barricades "to protect myself". I can only do that by regularly reminding myself of the nature and authority of the One in whom I trust. And the best way to do that is to regularly look around and thank Him for the good gifts that he has showered on me - not limiting the pool by focusing on a few gifts that He has chosen not to give me yet. Give thanks regularly, trusting the One who is both good and powerful.

Self in space & time...

Re-imagining yourself is an exhausting task - being open (or trying to be) to new possibilities. New rooms, new jobs, new suitors - they all bring an unpredictability: excitement, frustration, creativity, over-whelmedness.

Sometimes there is a certain thrill - a moment of inspiration, a tender building of affection, insight into the possibilities that change would bring. When that happens, re-imagining yourself is like playing house as a child - creating a story in your head and running with it giddily.

Sometimes, however, you're not sure how far you should stretch. Sure, I'd be open to learning how to install a hydroponics garden.... wait, really? Would I? Do I actually want to know how to do that? With this wondering comes a certain tiredness, a longing for stability: the predictability of dynamics and expectations, the knowledge of where things are or where they are supposed to be put away. It's not like you don't know who you are, you've just re-imagined your context so much (or actually changed it!) that you don't see how you fit anymore.

How do we meet ourselves there? How do we speak truth into all those emotions? How much do you push through the internal resistance to change - or do you heed it completely, cautiously, becoming hesitant and or a bit of a curmudgeon?

"Joy to find in every station something still to do or bear..." Hmm. Oh, liminal spaces.

Hannah's Heart...

How do we learn how to wrestle for good things? To be real with the deep desires, honest pains - and still be in an attitude of surrender and worship of Him who is so much higher than our understandings?

Lately I've been thinking about Hannah a lot, even buying a book in this journey/musing. This passage stood out to me:

"We will never understand Hannah until we begin with the assumption that her heart beats the same as ours do, that she has feelings just like we do. In her barrenness she was, by her own admission, in bitterness of soul. She wanted nothing more in all of life than to hold a baby of her own. Only when we allow these very human passions to exist in Hannah will we begin to see the fierceness of her love for God. ....

Hannah's psalms seem to reveal that everything changed for her when she realized Peninniah was laughing at God. Suddenly, much as Hannah longed for a child, she wanted something else even more. She wanted God to vindicate himself as the God who hears and and answers the prayers of those who trust in him. In prayer, she raised her sword in the battle for God's glory. The passion of her heart voiced the passion of the prayer Jesus later taught his disciples - 'Hallowed be your name' (Matthew 6:9). She willingly offered up her most precious treasure to shut the mouth of the one who dared to mock her God."

So I've taken to writing my own psalms - prayers of honesty, for guidance, - but psalms that continually point back to the goodness and glory of God: to remind myself whenever I feel guilty, lonely, barren, or futile that He is beautiful, and invites me to come and worship Him. I am not all of those sad and broken adjectives - I was created for His glory!!

Sunshine...

Today was a beautifully sunny day, one that made you feel the goodness of spring, hope, light, and growth in general. And so, in the spirit of that - a poem from Hafiz - in The Gift.

The Sun Never Says

Even

After

All this time

The sun never says to the earth,

"You owe Me."

Look

What happens

With a love like that,

It lights the

Whole

Sky.

Ascent from the nadir

Now granted, I'm prone to moments of melo-drama, but lying on my friend's couch last Saturday night at four in the morning - ashamed, angry, exhausted, self-pitying and self-scolding all in one - I thought to myself, "I've reached a new nadir in my life, an all time low." In the train of thoughts that were chasing each other round faster than I could sort them out snippets of "I don't deserve to live" and things of that dark ilk clouded the picture and made life look very bleak indeed.

The weekend had started out well: celebrating a friend buying a house, and then another friend getting married.... But at that shower I learned that (what should I call him, 'my heart's hopeful'?) was asking another girl out, and rather quickly the self-pity snake charmer was at my door. "I'll never get married," I wailed to myself, and strangely enough I was scolding myself on not knowing more pop-culture: not having a TV show that I watched regularly or a band that I followed devotedly... as if that were the ticket to being interesting to men. But I barreled out of that emotional lapse reminding myself that it wasn't my party and I was there to celebrate. And celebrate we did - dancing until 2 or so in the morning. At the end of the evening I offered to drive my friend home (using the car I was borrowing from my host family) only to discover that I couldn't find their key. So we re-traced the steps of our evening - traipsing around in the snow and a little black dress with two sprained knees (from an earlier ski accident) looking for a key... and all I kept thinking was "How could this happen? I'm not even tipsy, let alone drunk! Where did that key get to?" We went back and crashed at my friends house, and the guilt train thoughts emerged. 'You don't even have a real job, and now you've lost their car key. When will you ever learn to be responsible, Diana? No wonder no one takes you seriously....' I wanted to crawl into a deep hole far away, one that muffled out the sounds and life issues: a warm, safe cocoon.

I slept a fitful sleep and woke just before 8, with the very clear sense of being told, "I love you." It was the first gift of the day - there were hundreds more - and the first truth that I had listened to in the barrage of lies and self-depreciation. In fact, the word I thought was 'gracious' - the whole day was just gracious - how wonderful to babysit an excitable little girl at the National Cathedral where the architecture is breathtaking (or, comically, 'creepy' to a five year old) and the Lenten roses were in bloom. How sweet to celebrate the upcoming birth of twins with a friend at a baby shower. How healing to realize that I have some truly supportive and affirming guy friends. And then, in the coup de grace after dinner - to hear that the key had been found! One little old key lost in the city - found.

So, besides being a really funny incident of how situations can influence our emotions and trains of thought - what more do I need to learn from this weekend? That even when I am guilty, irresponsible, sad, afraid or angry -- I musn't let the emotions rule the day, but rather seek the truth and the love of the Father. Or at least just wait for the morning light.

Ah, bon

If I had to describe my professional life right now, I guess that I could say that I was a consultant or a contractor. I do short contract work with several different groups,such as translating official documents into French, designing a handbook for an NGO in Liberia, editing for a Swiss Foreign Policy magazine.... and it's fun, the variety is good and I learn a lot. But there is still a large part of me that is ready for stability of a prescribed role, and a schedule that is predictable. I'm definitely not the world's greatest job searcher, so this has been humbling, but it is also good.

I'm preparing to move at the end of this month, so I've begun packing up my bookshelves - and it's been great to discover old books that I want to read and even to flip through old journals... to see both the progress and growth and the sameness and 'themes' in my life.

Seasons. The change comes slowly, like the crocus' just beginning to peak through the soil... but each one has its joys and its challenges.