Washed back to shore

At 1 am this morning we washed back onto the shore of Uganda, after three weeks at sea.  

For three weeks of sabbatical we breathed and ate and slept and read and talked and played and thought and prayed, in short we practiced the difficult and nearly lost art of just being, in the presence of God and our family, with no agenda to accomplish.  Not even a spiritual agenda:  yes, we prayed, but after sleeping long and well, and even the prayers were not directed at a particular decision or outcome.  By grace we found ourselves in a simple but beautiful villa, an open-to-the-breeze house with a high grass roof and wide shaded veranda overlooking a sheltered cove of the Indian Ocean, on the east coast of the island of Zanzibar.  No TV, no phone, no restaurants or places to go or visit, no stores within an hour's drive, no organized activities, no pool, no A/C, no one who speaks more than a phrase of English, no one who knows us or expects anything from us.  Just blazing sun, the rhythm of the tides, stacks of good books, fresh seafood, and meters and meters of open sand and open water.  Most mornings we awoke to a minute-by-minute crescendo of sunrise colors, read and prayed on the porch before the kids got up.  Breakfast, swim in the ocean, games, reading, more swimming.  Our family collectively read more than a hundred books, a bit of an orgy in words and thoughts I realize, but wonderful.  In three weeks we only got into a taxi once to visit the historic capital Stone Town, otherwise we stayed on the beach.  There was a fishing village nearby, so we were not completely removed from life, as scores of dhows sailed in and out of the lagoon filled with men going to fish in the deeper waters while younger men and children hunted fish with spears in the shallow lagoon and women gathered armfuls of seaweed.  This was supposed to be rainy season, so we saw only a half-dozen other foreigners the entire time we were there, many of the island's hotels being closed for the month.  I can envision one of our prayer-warrior supporters like Aaron holding up Moses' hands and swaying the battle--someone must have prayed for the storms of May to desist from the island, because we barely saw a cloud until the last few days.  We learned that our kids can (mostly) just "be" too, they loved the quiet, the water, the huge pillowed couches for reading, the relaxed attention from their parents, the rounds and rounds of games of hearts and speed scrabble, the never-the-same entertainment of the lagoon's corrals.  By far the best aspect of this house was that we could walk off the porch and directly into the ocean, and depending on the tide wade or swim amongst branching corrals and darting bright tropical fish.  The lagoon was sheltered by an off-shore reef, which swam out to almost daily.  There the waves crashed with exhilarating power, and beyond the breakers we could snorkel over wild patterns of corral and schools of fish.

And God was there.  We met Him in the quiet, and in the sudden rain squalls.  In the endlessness of the ocean, it's mighty power of tide and force.  In the hiddenness of the water's depths.  In the danger of being crushed or lost in the waves.  In the beauty of the extravagance of species, the vivid improbable colors, the endless variations of shapes.  In the certainty of the tide's ebb and flow.  In the obscurity, the way the complicated balance of the underwater gardens can not be imagined from the surface, but must be seen through masks under the water.  It reminded me of the veil that masks spiritual reality to our naked eyes most of the time, we lack the mask or goggles to glimpse the flurry of angelic presence that is truly there.  

In spite of all this wonder and beauty, Zanzibar is an island that has hosted some of the worst evils of human-kind, as a key harbor and market in the slave trade.  It is still a place where most are poor, where there is suspicion of the foreign, where the organized religion of the vast majority resists change.  Our one day of historic exploration took us down into cramped cellar vaults in Stone Town where Africans were held to be auctioned at the slave market, and to a moving statue and cathedral dedicated to the memory of the abolition of the trade.  When we organize the pictures I will try to post the plaque that recognizes the work of David Livingstone, because it quoted from my favorite verses in Rev 12, in a poignant way.  We were in Zanzibar in response to the suffering of Africa that had sapped our souls this year, to recover from Ebola and Jonah's death and the draining fear of risking more great loss.  The sun and wind and water and peace brought great healing, but I'm glad that in the middle of that we also got a glimpse of the tremendous courage and faith that forged these paths long ago, the company of the saints.

I miss the surf, the moving sound of the tide.  We had our respite of bathing in the depths of God's barely-skimmed oceanic presence, and now he has washed us back ashore.  But in coming back to Uganda we come home, thankful for the familiarity and friendliness.  And we washed right back into our community of saints, meeting most of our team here in Kampala, for which I am thankful.  One of the many passages that stood out in the last month was the book of Jonah--both for the linguistic connection with our friend Jonah, and in the strong themes of watery depths and God's deliverance, of wondering if God's call is too hard and too much, of drawing away, of God's pursuit, and mercy.  So now being washed back to shore we pray that we will take the road to Niniveh and live boldly and truly in that place.