with Emmanuel Katongole
Friends,
A few newer online resources you may find interesting:
A discussion of my Mirror to the Church can be found here, which could be a useful introduction if you haven’t read it.
I recently commented to PRISM Magazine n Genocide and Forgiveness in Rwanda. The full article can be found here.
Hopefully these will be helpful to some.
The temptations of Jesus which we read about on the first Sunday of Lent offer us three usual ways – possession, power & fame – through which we seek meaning and significance, thinking that this is what makes us ‘somebody’ in the world. Lent offers us a time to name (and resist) these as illusions. For in the end, these are not what make us real. In the children’s classic The Velveteen Rabbit (Margery Williams) the stuffed rabbit is surrounded by other, more expensive and sophisticated mechanical toys that flaunt their complexity and eventually asks “Does real mean having things that buzz inside you and a handle that sticks out?”
The Skin Horse replied, “Real is how you are made. It is a thing that happens to you. When a child loves you for a long time, not just to play with, but really loves you, then you become real.”
“Does it hurt?” asked the rabbit.
“Sometimes,” said the Skin Horse, for he was always truthful. “When you are real, you do not mind being hurt.”
“Does it happen all at once, like being wound up,” he asked, “or bit by bit?
“It doesn’t happen all at once,” said the Skin Horse. “You become. It takes a long time. That’s why it doesn’t happen to people who break easily, or have sharp edges, or who have to be carefully kept. Generally by the time you are real, most of your hair has been loved off and your eyes drop out and you get lose in your joints and very shabby. But these things don’t matter at all, because once you are real, you can’t be ugly except to people who don’t understand.”
Lent is the time to remember that being loved by God is in the end what makes us real. It is also a time to learn to let ourselves be so loved. When one thinks about it from this perspective, lent becomes a very joyful season!
For an extended reflection along these lines see Patricia Datchuck Sanchez, “Becoming Real” National Catholic Reporter, Feb 5, 20, 2010 (p. 27).
As I step forward to receive the ashes on my forehead (“you are dust and unto dust you shall return”) – a poem of the exiled Guatemalan activist Julia Esquivel – “I am not afraid of death” comes to mind. It is a beautiful poem, a good reminder of what this season is all about: an invitation to live now in a manner beyond death, beyond fear. I hope you find the poem (really the entire collection of her poems Threatened With Resurrection) helpful as you begin your Lenten journey.
I am no longer afraid of death
I know well
Its dark and cold corridors
Leading to life.
I am afraid rather of that life
Which does not come out of death,
Which cramps our hands
And slows our march.
I am afraid of my fear
And even more of the fear of others,
Who do not know where they are going,
Who continue clinging
To what they think is life
Which we know to be death!
I live each day to kill death;
I die each day to give birth to life,
And in this death of death,
I die a thousand times
And am reborn another thousand
Through that love
From my People
Which nourishes hope!
–From Threatened with Resurrection
(If interested, see my Lenten Journey booklet as a resource for this season.)
Friends,
It is taking me much longer to share about my time in East Africa, especially about the recently concluded 4th Gathering of the Great Lakes Region. As soon as I got back to Duke I got sucked into the immediacy of Duke’s world of teaching, meetings plus all sorts of the usual cultural adjustments. To be sure, I am also still sorting through and processing the full impact and many gifts of the time in Burundi. So, bear with me as I work on the full report and pictorial update.
Some of the over 110 Christian leaders drawn from across different denominations and countries in the East Africa region and beyond…
… 3 days of eating and worshipping together, conversations and learning together…
…around the topic of Politics, Leadership and the Christian calling, using the book of Esther as guide, under the banner “For Such Time as This…
…and making a pilgrimage to Ruyigi to learn from Maggy Barankitse and her Maison Shalom community of hope.
Please watch this space for more updates. In the meantime, see the blog entry from Paul and Rebecca Mosley, MCC country reps in Burundi.
Also follow my colleague, Chris Rice’s blog re: voices from the Gathering.