You know how I thought we were too isolated out there in the woods and that it was time to move to a city neighborhood? Well here we are in the new neighborhood, close to friends and strangers alike, close to downtown events and restaurants, surrounded by the hum of activity and you know what? Not that much has changed.
I should say, I haven’t changed. Continue reading
I feel like I’ve been on vacation for the past week–a spa experience complete with steambaths and plenty of rest. My bum knee is recovering from the strains of the past weeks, moving house and traveling long distances. I have few responsibilities except doling out money as needed. There is plenty of time for hanging out with friends new and old.
I’m doing all this ease-taking in one of the roughest cities in the world, Kinshasa, DR Congo. Continue reading
When I go to church in Congo, as I did yesterday, it’s usually all about the music. Enough glorious, full-volume, tam-tam–beat harmony can get me through 2-3-hour services without totally wilting in the heat. And now, after many visits over the past five years to the same little congregation in the heart of a cramped Kinshasa neighborhood only partly accessible by vehicle, it’s about the people, too. This is my community, my home church in Congo.
I have trouble concentrating on the sermons, though. Continue reading
Today I took a break from unpacking boxes and moving furniture and packed my bags for Congo. I leave in three days.
We began moving into our new home nine days ago and yesterday it began to feel like home. Our daughter had played house, arranging furniture and rugs, and her husband had moved extra stuff and boxes upstairs, while Ethan, the two-year-old Entropy Machine, scattered cars, trucks, and improvised light sabers faster than we could collect and stash all the stuff of our existence. Hazel, 6, picked daffodils that popped up on a warm day and explored all the nooks and crannies. The house felt blessed and broken in by their presence. Continue reading
It is March 13 and a fresh snow slows time as if to say, Let’s have some more winter before spring bursts upon us.
I could use a real time stop, to let me catch up with myself. Maybe that’s why time has been playing tricks on me. Like I was sure today is my grandson’s second birthday when it was actually yesterday. Continue reading
It helps to be out of the country.
It helps to get the news in one fierce shock rather than watching it unfold over hours like a slow-motion train wreck.
It helps to get the news in the morning rather than in the middle of the night.
It helps to get the news in hot sun rather than cold rain. Continue reading
On this Fourth of July I would have been traveling home from Congo. I have emerged from the sharp grief over the trip that didn’t happen but I am still stuck in a limbo of boredom and puzzlement because I have no idea what I am going to do next. Continue reading
This is not my passport. It is my husband’s. I thought a passport was an appropriate image for this post but I don’t have mine right now. It is somewhere in the bowels of the DR Congo embassy in Washington, DC.
I hope I will get it back someday. I certainly will not have it by Wednesday, which is the day I was supposed to leave for the DRC. Continue reading
A choir from Kenya performs on the Global Village stage at Mennonite World Conference Assembly
Cicadas, a crowing rooster, a misguided moth trying to find an opening in the porch screens. I am at home and otherwise alone with time to reflect for the first time in a month. Time, but little mental clarity. It has been quite a month.
On June 25 four friends arrived from DR Congo to spend three and a half weeks in our community, doing volunteer work with members of my congregation, cementing our congregational partnership. And then we attended the global assembly of Mennonites/Anabaptists that takes place somewhere in the world once every six years, this time in Harrisburg, PA. In the last time slot of the last day of the assembly, three of us presented a workshop on church-to-church partnerships. Continue reading
I am busy. I am so busy that I am forgetting things and losing things. Yesterday morning I sat down to meditate and, after three minutes, I forgot that I was meditating and jumped up and started doing something else. I am not used to being this busy but it is for a good cause: an extended visit by friends from Congo. Continue reading
the practical mystic 