I saw my retreat director today as he was in Harare. Lovely to have both rain and time together...refreshing, renewing.
We talked again about beleiving in the dark. We talked of a God who seems to forget that some of us humans are frail and easily broken. Then we talked of the insatiable impulse that has driven me almost crazy since returning from retreat. Every day I have felt the need to know this contradictory and silent God more deeply. Every day I have been aware of the shallow shadows of my beleif. Every day I have wondered how to pray.
Every day my questions grow more intense, and the possibility of answers is lost in the noisy busyness of my daily life.
We concluded that perhaps it was time to seek help from my Jesuit friends and make the Spiritual Exercises.
Wow.
Never saw that coming when I put the kettle on for Fr Richard this afternoon.
Tuesday 22 November 2011
Sunday 20 November 2011
One third and two thirds
Being of a mathematical sort of mind it has often struck me that The Third World or Undeveloped World (where I live) is approximately two thirds of the land mass and population of the world. And while I am in the wealthy bracket in that World (though I am poor by a lot of First World measures) confronting the poverty of most of my world is unavoidable. I am familiar with the litany of lack of freedom and corruption and sheer greed that contributes to this poverty, of AIDS and lack of health care and education and adequate food, how drought impacts vulnerable populations, decimating them. I live with these realities everyday.
I am reading Richard Foster's fascinating book Streams of Grace and in one small paragraph in this densely packed book he mentions that perhaps the Third World is not so much undeveloped as the First World is overdeveloped. This thought was arresting to me as a Third Worlder and I have mulled it over for weeks. It releives a certain sense of inferiority. Then this weekend it has been brought into sharp focus.
A young eight year old son of a distant part of our extended family was burnt playing with fire nearly a year ago. There is no paediatric burns unit here and the care he got was rudimentary. Now he is still underweight and not yet over the shock of the burns and the initial treatment. Consequently he has healed with some thick keliod scarring, especially across his chest which will hinder his growth in the future. He needs pressure bandages and a special gell to control the scaring and assist in making it more flexible so in a few years time when he is over the shock and grown up a little more he can have corrective surgery. But it cannot be done here as there is only one plastic surgeon in Zimbabwe and he doesn't do paediatric work because of his age. Yet in the First World there are a bunch of plastic surgeons who frequently do work that is purely elective. Not that there is anything wrong essentially with what they do....just an inequity is all I'm saying.
And I wonder how we as Christians are supposed to respond to this sort of situation?
What do you think?
I am reading Richard Foster's fascinating book Streams of Grace and in one small paragraph in this densely packed book he mentions that perhaps the Third World is not so much undeveloped as the First World is overdeveloped. This thought was arresting to me as a Third Worlder and I have mulled it over for weeks. It releives a certain sense of inferiority. Then this weekend it has been brought into sharp focus.
A young eight year old son of a distant part of our extended family was burnt playing with fire nearly a year ago. There is no paediatric burns unit here and the care he got was rudimentary. Now he is still underweight and not yet over the shock of the burns and the initial treatment. Consequently he has healed with some thick keliod scarring, especially across his chest which will hinder his growth in the future. He needs pressure bandages and a special gell to control the scaring and assist in making it more flexible so in a few years time when he is over the shock and grown up a little more he can have corrective surgery. But it cannot be done here as there is only one plastic surgeon in Zimbabwe and he doesn't do paediatric work because of his age. Yet in the First World there are a bunch of plastic surgeons who frequently do work that is purely elective. Not that there is anything wrong essentially with what they do....just an inequity is all I'm saying.
And I wonder how we as Christians are supposed to respond to this sort of situation?
What do you think?
Sunday 13 November 2011
Long cats and wet dogs
The heat is baking today and the granite counters in my kitchen are currently hosting three long stretched cats and one long kitten, tummy pressed to the stone! I should really chase them off but it is just to hot for such exertions.
I should really chase Shadow, my elderly golden retriever, out from under the lawn sprinkler as I am sure it is not so good for him to be soaked.
I should so all sorts of things but I think I am going to fall into the pool instead.
I should really chase Shadow, my elderly golden retriever, out from under the lawn sprinkler as I am sure it is not so good for him to be soaked.
I should so all sorts of things but I think I am going to fall into the pool instead.
Saturday 12 November 2011
Memory
I have spent the morning at the gun club, not a place I ordinarily spend much time. It is a place my husband and sons and cousin love and they thoroughly enjoy the precision target shooting. Their skills vary but seemingly not their pleasure, and all are turned out today as it is the end of year championships, a big day with a real festival atmosphere. I am being useful in scoring. Accountants always get the numbers jobs.
Strange to smell the cordite. And it creates an echo of memory and with it a different perspective after all these years.
I grew up in a war. A dirty little civil, race inspired war. Vicious, bitter, cruel, ugly.
I grew up on a homestead on a farm and such isolated dwellings were vulnerable to attack. Because manpower was desperately short young teenagers on farms were armed and taught to use weapons. I was one of many such. Sure enough when attack happened I did as I was trained and shot back, like many other teenagers caught up in an adult world that we didn't understand. It was a time that introduced us to the terrible world of death and grief as many of our contemporaries died in the conflict.
The cordite smell today brought back those sad, ugly memories.
And the strange thought that I am grateful to be able to offer prayers for all those of my school friends who died in the war on the Feasts of All Souls and All Saints. For a long time, year on year I have attended a service somewhere and remembered. Faithfully. In grief often enough, and over the passage of the years with a deepening love for those lives were brutally cut short, and their families who have had to live with the losses that never really ease.
Strange to smell the cordite. And it creates an echo of memory and with it a different perspective after all these years.
I grew up in a war. A dirty little civil, race inspired war. Vicious, bitter, cruel, ugly.
I grew up on a homestead on a farm and such isolated dwellings were vulnerable to attack. Because manpower was desperately short young teenagers on farms were armed and taught to use weapons. I was one of many such. Sure enough when attack happened I did as I was trained and shot back, like many other teenagers caught up in an adult world that we didn't understand. It was a time that introduced us to the terrible world of death and grief as many of our contemporaries died in the conflict.
The cordite smell today brought back those sad, ugly memories.
And the strange thought that I am grateful to be able to offer prayers for all those of my school friends who died in the war on the Feasts of All Souls and All Saints. For a long time, year on year I have attended a service somewhere and remembered. Faithfully. In grief often enough, and over the passage of the years with a deepening love for those lives were brutally cut short, and their families who have had to live with the losses that never really ease.
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