Creativity as an act of both beauty and survival

This morning I read a quote by musician Jon Batiste, discussing a lullaby he wrote for his wife when she was hospitalised with relapsed leukemia awaiting her second bone marrow transplant. He called the song writing process "a testament to creativity as an act of both beauty and survival." 

Amen. It isn't often that a phrase knocks one over as a succinct capsule of the truth of life. 

Beauty and survival, inextricably intertwined because we are humans grappling through a broken universe, but resonant with the spark of God. So we see the goodness in colour, harmony, form, light, taste .. . but we also see goodness in making it through another day. Today we walked around Christ School again with Alex, the facilities manager. Beauty and survival could be his job description, and ours. And creativity is called out by our scarcity, our limits.

Many of the buildings and campus of this school are about to start their 25th year of service. . . and 24 years of heavy rain, abundant insect life, generations of student use, pounding equatorial sun, the occasional earthquake and landslide and flood and war, well, it takes a toll on all of us. Particularly when we started a quarter-century ago on a limited donation-dependent budget, using local materials and builders in a place where few concrete buildings existed. Perks of surviving, we are now past the establishment phase and squarely into the major maintenance and repair stage. Which sounds much less noble and exciting. 

But repair and restoration put us squarely into Jesus' redemptive story of all-things-new. In Bundibugyo these days, it's about replacing termite-crumbled doors and frames with welded metal ones, about re-plastering crumbled cement, about modifying beds to more securely hang mosquito nets in this malaria epicenter,  about digging out clogged drainage trenches, about fixing leaks and repairing bent rusted roofing sheets. A lot of survival. And then about new coats of paint to brighten and clean the students' bathing room spaces, to make new chalk boards for learning, to bring neatness consistency to the appearance of classes, to replace ceiling holes with new white tiles. A lot of beauty too. 

It's actually a very tangible example of all of life here. The repair and restoration of hungry little bodies or the wresting of drinkable water down a mountain slope or the patient teaching of young people all are ways we push back against the entropy of decay and give life into the groaning creation. With Alex today we tried to prioritise the many needs of the school, to choose the projects that we could do. Do we have to replace all 27 doors that are falling apart, or could we start with 20? Do we have to replace the whole ceiling in this room, or could we just do half? Even the budget we cut and modified will nearly empty our Serge fund. Scott sent out a fundraising letter, but if you read this far and want to participate feel free to click here and join in.  We need the help, and the act of creatively figuring out how to make this place renewed leads to survival and beauty. Not a bad goal for Christmas!

This is how the day looked: Scott and Alex pondering the needs (above) or showing a worker how to dig out the drainage ditch (below)

On to the next set of dorms and classes . . .

Termites munched the door frame above, and time has not been kind to the latrine below.

Leaking roofs ruin the paint and ceilings in the classrooms