April 5, 2006 · 10:26 pm

Merci Nzambe

I came home tonight pretty tired.  It was a long and busy day and the days lately have been too full – work, taking care of my aunt’s move, wrapping up loose ends, kids and their stuff, sick grandson and having to call his mom in sick to be excused from classes.  Lots of little busy details that I have to remember to take care of.  Glad for my PDA that helps me keep organized. 

So, arriving home tired, I sat down at the computer to quickly check my e-mail before making supper.

I never expected the news I read – Massa is coming.  Not just a notice of the positive decision to send him here but dates and flight numbers of the plane he is coming on. 

Waiting.  It has been 8 long years of waiting, paperwork, waiting, repeating the paperwork, waiting.  Praying.  Reminding ourselves that God had led them to the place they were at.  Praying and waiting.

I haven’t seen these guys since we left the Congo in a hurry back in 1991.  They were Eric’s best friends, like brothers.  They were always around.  The cement cooking stand on my back porch made a good seat when there was no charcoal fire burning there.  Someone was always hanging out there and these guys were often there.  All young guys like chocolate cake or just a drink of water after a soccer game.  There were always soccer games.  And there were the spoils after hunts or fishing trips and I had a freezer. 

There are so many memories.  Having Massa arrive will be like having one of my own boys come home after being apart for 15 years.  It will be so good. 

But we still wait.  We have good news about Massa but there is still Younde waiting in Cameroun. 

Bring him home too, God.  Merci Nzambe.  Na motindo na yo, yaka na ye awa noki.

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April 5, 2006 · 9:36 pm

More on Nouwen

There are some outstanding things about Henri Nouwen I learned from Michael O’Laughlin’s book. 

 

One was the decision made by Nouwen to identify himself with Jesus even if that meant being humiliated and scorned by those active in the academic world.  Henri came out strongly advocating that Jesus was “the Son of God come down from heaven” and the central point in Christian spirituality.  Tolerance of religious belief was something Harvard was proud of.  Celebrating Christ’s divinity was not politically correct and Nouwen began to experience rejection.  He was criticised for “spiritual imperialism” by the students. 

 

Needless to say, this stimulated doubt and depression but at the same time prompted new insights into the “downward” nature of Christian belief.  The road that he was taking did not lead to the “upward mobility” espoused by a generation seeking to become successful and prosperous in the eyes of the world.  It led downward towards humility and simplicity.  Nouwen wrote:

“In the gospel it’s quite obvious that Jesus chose the descending way.  He chose it not once but over and over again.  At each critical moment he deliberately sought the way downwards.  Even though at twelve years of age he was already listening to the teachers in the Temple and questioning them, he stayed up to his thirtieth year with his parents in the little-respected town of Nazareth and was submissive to them.  Even though Jesus was without sin, he began his public life by joining the ranks of sinners who were being baptized by John in the Jordan.  Even though he was full of divine power, he believed that changing stones into bread, seeking popularity, and being counted among the great ones of the earth were temptations. 

 

Again and again you see how Jesus opts for what is small, hidden, and poor, and accordingly declines to wield influence.  His many miracles always serve to express his profound compassion with suffering humanity; never are they attempts to call attention to himself….”

 

 

Henri Houwen began to experience more and more of what it meant to follow Christ on this descending path, finding more solidarity with the poor, oppressed and handicapped.

 

 

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April 3, 2006 · 7:14 am

God’s Beloved, A Spiritual Biography of Henri Nouwen

God’s Beloved, A Spiritual Biography of Henri Nouwen

By Michael O’Laughlin

 

One of the reviewers has said of this book, “A biography of a soul – it shows us not how we can be more like Henri Nouwen but how, like him, we can become our own true selves: beloved of God.”  That was my experience as I read this book. 

 

I think some of the psychological tools used by the author to enhance the understanding of Henri Nouwen will be foreign to the general reader.  As I was reading through the chapter where he goes on at length about the personality type that described Henri, I wondered where he was going and why he spent so much time with this.  Later he does explain himself saying that he wanted to show how Henri was no exception to the traits of personality that shape us.  

 

“I have relied heavily on the MBTI in writing this chapter because it sheds so much light on Henri’s surprising combination of greatness and weakness, vision and vulnerability.  I believe that a good number of the more puzzling aspects of his personality can be explained as aspects of the ENFP personality type.  By this I am saying that Nouwen was probably much more psychologically healthy than even he himself suspected.” (p 76)

 

The author then goes on to encourage each of us to be true to the personalities we have been given, not to simply follow in the footsteps of Henri Nouwen.  I like that.  Each of us has been given gifts of personality.  We need to come to an acceptance of this and let God transform us in the ways he wants, use us in  the ways he has for us, rather than trying to live to a standard of another person who may be fundamentally quite different than us.  We will always learn from the experiences of another person but we are not expected by God to be like them.  We are loved by God for who we are.

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April 1, 2006 · 1:06 pm

Moving – Day 7

It all started a while back when things began to get packed up in my Aunt’s suite.  Then it moved into a higher gear last Saturday when several of us got together to pack up and move Auntie’s stuff out of the suite.  Who would have known that one room and a small storage area could contain so  much stuff!  I think we had one semi load of doilies.  I think the count in the room was 42. and we kept adding to the count as we packed.  These were just the ones that were in actual use – under some little nick knack to either set it off or protect the surface under it.  There were more in drawers not being used.  And there were cards – from long ago.  Some read, some still unopened. 

Too much stuff.  She’s a pack rat!

But you know – every little thing was at one time very special to my aunt.  She loved cute little things; still does.  She doesn’t remember who they are all from now but each one represented someone who loved her.  I wonder if for her, throwing things away was too hard because it all meant something – it represented a relationship.  Now we sort these things out, trying to judge on some arbitrary merit system, which pieces are important or suitable to take along for her room at the care home.  We see these things without the attachment to friends and dispose easily of what has to go. 

Today my aunt left the hospital.  We took her to her new place, she met some of the other women who live there too.  She knows many of them already.  That is a good thing.  I think she will be OK.  And she looks out the window and recognizes the area.  She will be living in the building that once was the women’s dorm at Covenant Bible College, where she spent most of her working years.  She looks out the window and some memories come flooding back

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March 27, 2006 · 9:15 pm

Reflection on Psalm 75

I thank you Lord

For you are very near.   Ps.75:1 (NLT)

 

Why did you choose to

Love me so intensely?

It is easier to imagine

A distant God; fierce and cold.

But you break in on me;

Interrupt my isolation.

Longing, like a deep sigh,

Sends me seeking you.

 

I am used to distance.

I guard the space

That insulates my life.

Calloused skin adds

Thickness.  Insensibility

Sets in to match my blindness

And my deafened ears

Till I am self contained.

 

I know I am not worthy of

A God who’d choose

To wrap himself in

Human cells and sinews

Just so I could know,

Or begin to know,

How much I am

Desired.  Delighted in.

 

My God. Incarnate Gift.

Beloved One. Gentle Saviour.

The mystery of your love

Tears off my wraps of

False protection. 

I thank you Lord.

Teach me to sense again

That you are very near.

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March 26, 2006 · 5:01 pm

What I learned in church today

No, I guess it may just have all kind of come together this morning.  God has been teaching me some of this stuff over a fair stretch of time with a bit more intensity in the last few weeks.

 

This morning I led the kids in their time together after the morning worship service.  We heard the story of how God protected this guy, Moses, as a small baby, being a child of the wrong race in a society out to get rid of children like him.  

 

It just happened that Moses was also talked about in the sermon – a man of faith.  

 

I guess all those things that happened to Moses were in preparation for the role God had for him.  Being protected from birth – being raised by his mother who must have said more than a few prayers over his little head – learning the inside workings of the pharaohs court, trying violence as a way of freeing his people, failing and fleeing, learning to live as a nomad sheepherder (that was good training) then finally hearing God’s voice and becoming a leader in spite of being stammering and reluctant.  I’m glad God chose to call into service people with flaws.  Maybe there are no humans without flaws anyway.  I find it hopeful that God could take this guy who was living a pretty ordinary nomad shepherd life and make him the leader he needed, transforming Moses into the person he needed him to be.  So, as Moses followed God’s instructions, as he grew in faith, he became the great leader that God wanted him to be.

 

It struck me that God wants us to be healthy; whole people.  Not just healthy in our spiritual aspects, but healthy in all of our many facets.  If we want to know God, if we want to hear his direction for our life, he will move us towards wholeness.  So as I come closer to him, instead of becoming only more “spiritual” and satisfied with that, he also shows me other aspects of my life that need to become healthier – things that make up my psyche where I need to become more healthy mentally and lifestyle things that would lead me towards better physical health.  I don’t know if I will ever arrive at that place of health that he desires for me, in this life – not likely.  I seem to have all these obstacles that I put up to run around, and I love chocolate far too much and procrastinate way too easily, but it is good to realize that complete health is God’s wish for me and that he will keep on working with me to move me in that direction.  

 

I think that if I can follow God like this that God will bring about healthy changes in me.  Then, like Moses in faith following God, he can move me towards the places he wants me to go, to do the work he has for me to do. 

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March 23, 2006 · 7:08 am

Stressing

The next couple of weeks are going to be so busy.  I have found that over the last week I have had little time or inspiration for blogging or even for reading some of my favorite blogs. 

Just too much going on.

My Auntie to move and things to do for her.  Children needing my timeand a place to hang out.  Grandchildren needing babysitting.  Committees needing work. 

Sometimes it gets to be almost too much.

Thanks friends who take the time to pray with me and for me.  As witness to the power that God has in providing strength for the day – I am still in one piece.  I still make it to work in the morning and through the day.  I am still sane – I think. 

But I may lay off this blogging for a bit – a week or two.  We will see I guess.  Sometimes this place acts as my stress reliever too.

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March 21, 2006 · 7:29 am

Road warnings

Late yesterday afternoon, Sara and I headed down to Saskatoon.  She and I needed to be at a parnet/teen meeting getting ready for her trip to California for the Easter break with Youth For Christ.  Since Sara has been little, visiting Disneyland has been one of her dreams.  Since it was never high on our agenda for vacation spots, I am glad she can finally go.  She has no friends who have decided to go along with her; it’s fairly expensive, but has has been working with this trip in mind.  I think she will do well in the friend making department – she is one of the nicest kids I know.(even if I do say so myself)

Anyway – those roads to Saskatoon!  Not bad from PA to Duck Lake.  Then they became snow and ICE covered for major stretches.  Slow driving – 60 to 80 kph most of the way.  And back over the same roads at night.  I hope it wams up enough to melt that stuff off the roads soon.  Leo drives the same roads today. 

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March 15, 2006 · 6:53 pm

The Table

Last week at our small group we gathered around a small table and were invited to bring whatever we had and, figuratively, place it on that table in front of God.  The time we spent praying together was very good.  As I went home from there, I was struck by the reality that I did not put much on the table.  A few things, but I did not want to monopolise the time with my own stuff.  I could have filled that table; heaped stuff on there till the table broke! In fact sometimes the problems are a bit like the snow we have been having lately – it just keeps coming.  You shovel and clear a path and before morning it is all filled up again.  No end it seems. 

 

But, you know how it is; politeness keeps us from unloading all our stuff in front of others.  Some reservation is likely the proper thing to do under the circumstances.  But not as far as what we put on the table before God.  We won’t run out of time or burden him by spending long periods of time telling him the details of our life where we need him to work.  He is a very gracious host. 

 

As a result of the time we spent together last Wednesday, I went home and wrote.  Poetry seemed the only way to express some of the things I felt.

 

The Table

 

The table waits. In linen

A long expanse of pure white

And all around

A ragtag crowd clutches

Great green garbage bags

Bulging with broken goods. 

We’ve come in hope.

There was a promise; this stuff

Could be exchanged here

For better things.

 

We are afraid.

We thought it was a yard sale.

He said to bring whatever we had,

That we could leave it here,

Our junk,

And get stuff remade like new,

For nothing.

The spotless white linen

Will be spoiled

By what I’ve brought.

.

I have a heart dripping

With brokenness.

It’s sure to stain.

There are words oily with

The dark lubrication of half truths.

Here are puzzles with no picture guide,

Missing pieces.  Dust gatherers.

There are rags infected

By disease awaiting cures

Hope having died in little steps.

 

Jesus, how dare I

Soil your table with such filth?

How can I spread such piles

Of worthless junk before you?

I should have brought my finest stuff

But had none.

You say, “Don’t worry,

The invitation stands. Come. 

Give me your broken stuff”

 So here I am.  Here is everything I am.

 

 

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March 14, 2006 · 9:27 pm

A long time ago…

Actually 57 years ago today, a bit before this picture was taken, I was born.  I think this picture was taken sometime in the late spring or early summer back in 1949.  I was born in Saskatoon and this picture was taken on my grandparent’s farm north of Prince Albert, I think.  My dad was a student in Saskatoon at the time, at Luther Seminary, I believe.  I am in my mom’s arms, my dad is holding my brother who was just a year old. 

I have been celebrating this birthday since Friday when Leo took me out for supper at Amy’s.  Over the weekend we have done various family things, including the dinner with my aunt on Sunday.  Tonight Sara “cooked” supper.  She ordered Chinese food from Star House.  That is her idea of cooking.  Funny, my boys can all cook.  My girls are best at take out food.  Anyway, we had fun and the food was great.

Some of my special gifts – several books: The Renovare Study Bible, The Genesee Diary by Nouwen and a gift certificate for another book.  Also Iona’s Open Sky CD, chocolate and some ear rings.  And a beautiful  photo of an Orchis rotundifolia (round leaved orchid) from Alberta by Michelle.  I even got a slobbery kiss from my grandson.  A good day except that I ate too much good stuff.

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