This is my final sabbatical reflection and one that I shared during the sermon time at McClure United Church on Sunday.
I
have so much to tell you... it's really hard to know where to begin.
But
I'll begin saying a great big thank you.
The gift of sabbatical time has been such an
incredible blessing to me.
Thank
you for making that possible.
Thank
you for your prayers...
thank
you for your emails of love and support...
I
can't tell you how much it meant to me to know that during my time away people
here were thinking of me and holding me in loving prayers.
And,
of course, I am also extremely grateful to Ron and Debra for carrying an extra
load in my absence and to all those who filled in and covered for me... Zac and Shannon for caring for the youth..
and Meghan and the Faith Development Committee for organizing Rainbow Village.
I
also want to say that I missed you... so very very much I missed you. And I am grateful to be back.
I
really want to share with you today some of what I learned during my time away.
I want to tell you about how the spirit of God has been working in my life…
I
think an important reflection to share… especially during this season of
Pentecost.
Many
of you, I know, have already read some of the personal reflections I offered on
my blog over the past 5 months.. but if
you haven’t… and are interested... I’ve made copies of my blog posts and you
can find them at the back of the church.
So
I guess a good place to begin is at the beginning. My sabbatical began on December 25...
Christmas Eve being my last official day of work.
Most
of January was spent slumming around in my pj's, drinking tea, memorizing
spanish words and preparing for my trip, packing, unpacking and repacking my
backpack... and taking care of all of the little details I needed to take care
of.
I’d
been planning this trip to Nicaragua for over a year. At first it felt as though the day would
never arrive... and then suddenly I found myself on an airplane bound first for
Houston Texas and then on to Nicaragua... to the capital city of Managua and
finally to the city that would become my home for 2 months... the city of Esteli.
Esteli
is the third largest city in Nicaragua... about 120,000 people live there.
Nicaragua
itself has a very interesting and somewhat tragic history... part of which
includes a devasting earthquake that happened in 1972 wiping out 90% of Managua
(a city of 400,000 people at the time).
Another
huge part of this country's history involves the Sandanista revolution which
also took place in the late 70s.
It
was a revolution that effectively overthrew the existing dictatorship, claiming
power and forming the first democratically elected government.
Prior
to these two events, Nicaragua
was the wealthiest and most developed country in central america...
but they have never been able to recover
from the mass destruction caused by both the earthquake and the
revolution.
Esteli
itself was heavily air-bombed in the late 70s... destroying most of the city
and many of its people.
So
currently Nicaragua is the second poorest country in Latin America. Statistics say that about 47% of the people
living in Nicaragua live on less than $1 per day.
And
this is where my story begins...
Everything
about my first few days in Esteli felt completely surreal. My home was located in Los Coquitos... one of
the poorer areas of the city. My
hosts... Lucilla and Nievez, although not wealthy in terms of money were rich
with hospitality and warmth and even though they spoke no English and I spoke
very little Spanish, they managed to make me feel very comfortable and
safe.
Now…
just to paint you a little picture of what I experienced...
I
want you to imagine streets.. narrow streets less than half the size of what we
have here... filled with people. walking, biking, riding horses... filled with
animals... cows, chickens, roosters, dogs, horses all sharing the road with
taxis, buses and other various motor vehicles.
And
then imagine the houses... many of which were wood shacks with dirt floors and
tin roofs... others, like the one i stayed in, were concrete slabs with
concrete floors and tin roofs.
Much
of the concrete brightly painted with every imaginable color... pinks, greens,
orange, purple and sometimes all on the same building.
Also
imagine the beautiful forested mountains surrounding Esteli.
And
imagine the ginormous mountains... 2 of them.. that I had to climb every day to
and from my spanish school.
And
finally.. imagine the people.
Beautiful
people... friendly, joyful, proud... and very very poor.
Because
I lived and spent most of my time in the Los Coquitos... I got to know many of
these people on a very personal level.
I’d
sit every evening in front of my house pretending to study but actually
watching the comings and goings of the neighbourhood and many people would stop
by to say hello.
Some
of them I spoke to only once or twice... others became dear friends that I saw
and spent time with every day.
And
this is where my story really begins... with the people of Esteli because these
people invited me into their homes and lives... shared with me their joys and
struggles...
and
because of them I have been forever changed.
I'm
not sure why... but during my time in Nicaragua, my heart was opened up in a
way it has never been before.
Now
I've always been pretty much a heart person... but here.. I don't know...
something different happened.
And
I think what happened was that removed from the business and chaos, that can
often be my life here in Saskatoon
I was able to be so much more connected and present, to myself and to the
people around me.
In
the absence of daily responsibilities and the stress that can sometimes
accompany them, an opening was created for God to enter in...
I
was, in a sense, born again.. spiritually awakened...
as
Jesus said to Nicodemus... I was born from above.
When
I was in Nicaragua I became my best, most compassionate, loving, generous
self.
I
entered fully into the lives of the people I met there.
I
loved them...
I
shared their joys and I shared their struggles and in the midst of that I felt
a growing sense of discomfort bubbling up inside of me...
discomfort
with my own privilege...
a
privilege that has not been earned or granted based on merit but has been
inherited because of pure luck... because I happen to have been born to middle
class parents, with white skin, in Canada.
I
also felt a growing discomfort with our
culture...
a
culture that allows people to go without... without food, medical care,
adequate housing, water, education.
I
felt ashamed of our world...
a
world where there is so much more than enough to go around..
where
so many of us have more than enough of everything, while others in the world
don't have nearly enough of anything.
I
began to think about all of the waste I've participated in... wasted money,
wasted food, wasted time...
None
of it felt very good and yet, at the same time, it stirred up in me a fierce
compassion and desire to help in whatever way I could.
While
I was in Nicaragua I did what I could to help those I could.
I
shared meals, money and other resources but more importantly... for me and for
them... I shared myself... my time.. my friendship... I shared hugs and
stories.
I
shared my love.
I
shared everything I could but yet, when the time came, I left there feeling, as
though everything I had to share would never be enough. I left there with a tremendous amount of
guilt that I was returning to my privileged life...
it
was hard not to feel as though I was turning my back on them.
I
left Esteli with a heart that had tripled in size... full of love and
compassion while, at the same time...
teetering on despair for the state of humanity.
But..
being the eternal optimist... the one who tends to see the glass always as half
full... this isn't the end of my story... despair does not have the final word.
I
went to Nicargua to learn Spanish.
It's
about the only thing I didn't learn.
Instead
I learned alot about me and about God... I learned that if you're going to
create space for God's spirit to enter in you better be good and ready to go
through the labor pains of rebirth.
And.. it wasn't really even that i created the space for God... it's
more like God saw that I was vulnerable and open and seized the opportunity to
move right on in.
And
once the spirit of God took over my Nicaraguan agenda.. it was game over.
God
opened my heart to love and through that love I experienced deep compassion...
and
through that compassion I experienced the grief of leaving my friends behind...
sorrow
as I realized that once I left their lives would return to normal... their
struggles would continue, as always,...
this is when the despair began to set in...
but
as I said... this story… it doesn’t end in despair...
This
story ends in a renewed and passionate commitment to living out the love and
compassion that is such a central part of who I am... of who, I believe, we all
are.
In
the 2 months since I've returned from Nicaragua I've had lots of time to
reflect... to pray... to live into the
rebirth that I experienced there.
I've
suffered the growing pains of reintegration...
of returning to what to me feels like vast wealth.. of returning to a culture of consumerism and
intense competition.
I've
come to terms with my privilege and rather than feeling guilty about it... am
finding the determination I need to use my privilege for good.. rather than to
gain more privilege.
I
still feel ashamed that I live in a world of people who don't know how... or
are too afraid... to share abundantly.
A
world that has so much wealth... so many resources... but where people are
forced to live in terrible poverty.
In
my reflecting over the past two months I’ve spent much time reading various
books that I thought might help me in my search for hope to balance the
despair. Once of those books is by
Archbishop Desmond Tutu and it's called “Made for Goodness”. I read one paragraph in the very beginning
part of the book that helped me to reorient myself... that began to reinstore
my hope and give all of my heartfelt learnings a new direction... and this is
what it says...
“Our
experience, our reading of scripture, and the people who have been part of our
lives -- however briefly -- have taught us some important truths that we will
share with you in this book. First, we will see that we are all designed
for goodness, and when we recognize that truth it makes all the difference in
the world. Second, we are perfectly loved with a love that requires
nothing of us, so we can stop "being good" and live into the goodness
that is our essence. And third, God holds out an invitation to us -- an
invitation to turn away from the anxious striving that has turned stress into a
status symbol. It is an invitation to wholeness that leads to flourishing
for all of us."
These
words hold out so much hope... and they reminded me of one of my most basic
beliefs about humanity... one that sort of got lost there for a little
while.
My
basic belief about humanity.. about all of us is this... we are good.
We
were created in God's image...
and
as the creation story tells us in Genesis... after God created man and woman and
looked upon them and all of creation.. God say.. “it is very good”.
No
matter what we have done... or not done... that goodness is always a part of
us.
It
is a part of me... and it is a part of each one of you.
God's
goodness is the essence of every single human being.
God's
goodness is the essence of all of creation.
Now, if this is true... and I really really believe it is... then there
is always hope.
The
evil that exists in our world.. the evils of violence, of racism, of neglect...
the evils that create poverty... all of these go against that fundamental
goodness.
And
because I believe in the truth of God's kingdom... a kingdom where goodness
reigns... I know without any doubt at all that just like my despair... these
things will not have the final word.
Evil is not the end of our story.
I
believe that the goodness of God's kingdom is not something of the far off
future but it is here… it is now.
For
every evil deed that is being committed right now there are many more good
deeds taking place...
people
all across the world are working for change.
People
are responding every minute to the call of goodness that’s within them.
There
are thousands of organizations working to make this world a better place.
There
are millions of people involved in these organizations or working on their own
to share their goodness with the world.
To
give in to despair is to deny the goodness.
I
can't deny the goodness... I've experienced it – both in receiving the goodness
offered by others and by being compelled to share the goodness that is in me
with those around me.
The
rebirth I experienced in Nicargua was an awakening of that goodness... all I
wanted to do was to help... to reach out... to just love.
Returning
to Canada hasn’t changed that.
And
while I feel compelled to share my experience of Nicaragua and the struggles of
the people I met there.. I am also compelled to be a voice that reminds people
of their goodness..
to
convince others to let their goodness out... let.. it.. out…let it be awakened
in you...
or
let the goodness that is already shining through be strengthened.
I
think that what’s wrong with our world...
what
drives people to live in ways that are selfish, arrogant, impatient, and even
violent....
is
that we have forgotten that we are good.
We
have forgotten that God created us out of the deep and spacious goodness of
love.... into love... to be love.
Our
love is God's only hope for the world.
God
needs us to love.
The
world needs us to love.
And
we need to be that love... not to just
think it... not to just quietly share it with those we’re closest to... but to
be that love in big, bold and daring ways.
Imagine
what our world would look like if everyone lived to love.... what a wonderful
world that would be.
And so... I've returned to you... to my ministry
here with this new fire burning inside of me.
I’m so ready to share God's love.
And what does sharing God’s love look like?
For me, sharing God's love looks like compassion,
empathy, caring... it looks like sharing laughter and sharing tears... it looks
like sharing what I have so that others might have what they need. It also
looks like anger at injustice... it looks standing with those who need a
friend, and challenging systems that keep people on the margins.
It looks like challenging a culture that works so
hard to convince us that we are not good enough.
God's love is not all sunshine and roses... and
living God's love is certainly not an easy task... but it is absolutely essential...
not only to the health and wholeness of our world... but also to our own sense
of well being.
And
the first step to living that love is remembering who we are.
We
are goodness.
No
matter how angry, or bitter, or distraught you might feel... no matter what
life has handed to you... no matter how you have responded to what life has
handed you... you are good.
You
were created in the image of God and nothing you can do... or nothing that has
been done to you... can ever ever change that.
The
best thing you can do for yourself.. the best thing you can do for the world..
is to accept this simple truth.
You
are goodness.
I'm
telling you to do whatever you need to do to see your goodness.
If
there’re things you have done that you feel guilty about... that are getting in
the way of your ability to see yourself as God sees you... then do what you
have to do to let it go.... talk to
someone.. talk to God.
If
life has left you angry, or bitter, or full of despair... talk about it... pray
about it.
It
doesn't matter how you do it, I just urge you to do something.
The
greatest sin we can commit, I think, is not living up to our full potential and
as long as we refuse to accept the goodness that’s within us… and also within
others… we are refusing to be who God calls us to be.
As
I said earlier... I think that one of the reasons I found myself spiritually
awakened in Nicaragua was because I slowed down long enough to be more present
to myself... to those around me and, also to God.
I
think that this is absolutely key to everything I'm talking about here.
In
order for our hearts to be opened.. for us to notice the great need in the
world and feel adequately equipped to respond with love, compassion and
challenge when it’s needed..
in
order for us to be able to recognize God's presence in our lives and the
goodness that that presence brings... we must slow down.
We
must make time for silence... for reflection.
We must create an openness for God's spirit to enter in.
God
is here... right here... waiting... hoping... for the opportunity to create new
life in all of us. God loves us that
much! Thanks be to God!
