here and there

THis is where I have been lately, and these are thoughts I recently shared with some friends...

I am faced with the on going question of – how do these worlds combine? How do the places I have been coexist? How do I live there and live here, and live here with there or there with here? Know what I mean?

 

Once you see life in a different way (this does not just pertain to life in another country.  It could be seeing sometime differently for the first time, being touched by the life of another, gaining a vision, understanding something anew, etc.) how does one go about keeping the old, and integrating the new? I think that there is always something to be said for keeping things that are good, but adding to that. Adapting. It is hard for some people. For me I want both the old and the new. Here and there. When I am fully here, I slip into wanting to be there or be that or just not be this. But really, somehow I want it all.

 

My primary struggle right now is inter-joining the worlds of Kenya and Missouri in my life. I hate talking about “my experience” in Kenya like there is some magnitude to it. Nothing great happened. Nothing different than anyone else could have done. I am not a spiritualist missionary; I did not go with a mission to bring revival or to change lives. I went to live. I went to meet. I went to share. I went to sit under that tree in the shade and tell jokes. I went to tuck girls into bed, and sing their songs in my broken Kikuyu. I went to cry with them and comfort them. I went to suffocate half to death in the kitchen over the wood fire cooking for hours upon hours. Many have gone, and accomplished much more before me.

 

I didn’t know it then, and I am still figuring it out now, but I think these things are good. I think these are the things to build a life around. I think these are the things that I want to be about.

 

When I think about life there, and joining that time with life here, it is not a spiritualized vision. It’s seems pretty simple really. Yet, I still have trouble with the learning and the changing.  How do I integrate time in the shade of the tree with friends over lunch, and my job behind a desk, which is necessary to make a living? Is it possible to live in a “slowly, slowly” (as they say in Africa) no hurry mentality, but not loose my job, or fail my classes? I want to cook around the fire and share my leftovers with friends. I also want to financially provide for my family.

 

One of my favorite things is that people are the same everywhere. In need of provision, attention, care. Selfish with out motivation, lost with out direction, faithless without hope, lonely without relationship. People just can’t do it alone. We are not created to do life without others. In Kenya they lean on each other everyday, homeless children die in the slums daily without the protection of the group. Neighbors’ help each other haul and sell their crops, the burden would be to large without help. In the United States, people idealize independence and fake contentment as they drown in loneliness. At the end of the day we need people too.

 

There is true beauty in a communal lifestyle. It is hard and wonderful. Beautiful and messy. That is what I have taken away as these worlds collide. And THAT has changed me, hopefully forever.

 

I don’t have answers- its simple, its complex. Its different than I thought it would be. But I can’t think about these things without thinking about Jesus and the life He lived and the way he spent time with people, with friends, with foes, with those who didn’t give a shit, with the imperfect. He just lived. He met. He shared. He ate. He sat under a tree. He listened and talked. And He cared a lot. BUT He, changed peoples lives.

 

I want to be like Him.

 

And this, in its simplicity, is what we are called to. This is the gospel. 

This is probably old news to you, I may be strides behind the rest. But today amidst the bills, the homework, the political bombardment and the latest family hubbub, I have found a freshness, a peace, a freedom, a renewed hope in the simple life that Jesus lived. I have found that my worlds can combine. The old and the new. The here and the there, the here with there or there with here.

 

Today I am taking a closer look at myself, and the way I live my life, to see how exactly I am reflecting the life that Jesus lived.  And this is what I journey on to do.

Join me.