Cheerfully searching for the path to resist evil, cancer, bombs . . .

Are we all reeling from the whiplashing events and press releases of the week, and wondering how to respond when God's name is invoked? Trying to sort out how to live with wars and graduations, cancer and connections, faith and politics.( Skip to end for photos if you prefer).

Bombs tempt us to think we can get things done more effectively by force than by negotiation. In a world that is full of greed and hate and obfuscation, I am not one who believes that it is never necessary for a policeman to forcefully stop a school shooter, or for an army to protect a village from cross-border rebels. Limits to self-promotion enable us to live together, to share resources, to trust community. A disciplined, regulated security force answerable to the voters and upholding the rule of law is still needed in our world,  And yet. We are fallible humans. I don't know if the net effect of our country's actions this week were good (more security for more marginalized people) or bad (failed attempt to disrupt nuclear war and successful stoking of fear and hate). I don't know if our actions were driven by concern for others or by self-aggrandizement. Time may tell, or more likely the net effect remains hazy, murky, arguable indefinitely. We do our best and we don't always get things right.

California protector from dangerous edges

But as a person who has lived on another continent for half my life now, I can see that power is rarely the best or most lasting way to forge peaceful relationships. And as a professional Christian in some sense, we in mission must NOT cloak our-country-first agendas with religious justification. So, just a reality check:

• God does not love America more than Iran, God does not choose sides in our sibling squabbles. For God so loved the WORLD (not just one part) that God paid the entire cost of peace by personal sacrifice not crushing dissent. 
• God chose the small whispering voice, not a rock-splitting wind or earth-moving quake or landscape scorching fire (all three sound like bombs) to reveal his presence to Elijah (1 Kings 19). God seems to work a long, slow, subtle change from hearts outward, not a fast blaze of punishing destruction.
• Jesus refused to make Israel a Middle East powerhouse, refused to fill the Messiah role of calling down heavenly armies to set things right. It's unfathomable that "Christian" faith could be now a reason to justify any one country in the region wiping out all others. The most largest injustice, loss of life, starvation, suffering being perpetuated in Jesus' homeland right now is in Gaza. Can we show love there?
• We all have to live lives of mercy and truth in a world full of danger and sorrow, but also full of beauty and grace.  Absolutely we should do our best to bring our values into every aspect of our life, working and voting too. But God doesn't want forced relationship. Our job is to live authentically in ways that reflect "do justice, love mercy, walk humbly with your God" that makes God's loving community real,  and attracts others to join. Not to think we can expand it by military might.
• Resist evil, do good. That's in the Bible, that's how we love our neighbor as ourselves.

The upheaval of the world finds us in our upheaval of life. We don't say personally that cancer is its own form of life, and quietly watch as we let it choke out all the rest of life in the body. We resist. Good news today that the 4 moths of medicine and initial 6 weeks of radiation therapy have successfully plummeted the cancer marker (PSA) in the blood down to undetectable. The cancer is still there, but being restrained, going dormant. Scott still pays the cost as we are now 2 days in to another 6 week course of daily sessions with the external beam radiation machine that targets the metastases in nodes further up his spine.  We were invaded, we are responding forcefully, careful though to limit the collateral damage, and paying the cost of discomfort and weariness and loss of much that we held as meaningful and dear.

That seems to me to be a picture of life in a broken world. Not ignoring evil or letting it choke out all that is good. But paying the price to resist, to limit, to distinguish life from death, good from bad. Knowing that we will most likely never completely be rid of all the cancer but, with the support of our community both medical and spiritual and biological . . . "cheerfully we refuse". 

Dr. Ssesanga served with us in Bundibugyo many years ago. When a brand new strain of ebola mysteriously broke out in our district in 2007, there were 4 doctors who examined patients and tried to keep running the system until help arrived (us and 2 Ugandans). Dr. Jonah died. Dr. Ssesanga was infected, locked himself in his house, and only opened for Scott to check on him. Scott and I were spared. Dr. Ssesanga went on to serve nearly 20 years in Uganda and died yesterday. He was a man who resisted evil and helped many.

Yesterday Scott started round 2 of radiation, and this friend Ian from round 1 took it upon himself to drive nearly an hour and show up to surprise and encourage us. The bonds of suffering are real.

In the weeks between round 1 and 2, we reconnected with some family and friends

Kacie and Winnie Forrest in Ventura, CA, with Scott's mom

Mike's parents and Scott's mom, mission is a whole-family center of gravity.

My mom and Chuck Meyer, her best friend's surviving husband who drove from Maine to visit us all, and has been a life-long prayerful support. My mom is finally recovering from a months-long ulcer and scaring misery and able to be in West Virginia for the summer!

On our CA trip we saw close-to-kids, two of the three Tabb girls that grew up in Bundibugyo with us. Laura is now a nurse . . .

As are Sarah and her husband Kevin. All three fit the theme of refusing evil and choosing life.

The main draw of the westward trip was to take Ruth, Scott's mom, to her grandson (our nephew) Karsten's graduation from UC Santa Barbara. 

Family photos by the lagoon and the tower, palms and sunshine, proud faces and full hearts.

Channel island light house built in 1932 like Ruth . . a symbol like the raptor at the top, using truth and sometimes some force to protect us all from danger

Scott taking care of all of us before heading back to radiation this week. We are thankful that the terrible timing of cancer has allowed us to be present with our moms to a greater extent, and we thank all who pray for them.

Ordinary Cancer Time

 Monday I opened my lectionary app as I do every morning, to “ordinary time.” Two thousand years of tradition have knit patterns of reading through Scripture, and remembering history, to the calendar. Actually thousands of years before that, ancient cultures did the same. The exodus of the entire people group descended from Abraham’s sons from Egypt, an enduring story of release from slavery and return to home, is tied to the cycle of moons and harvests. We are people of body and spirit, so the joining of timeless truth to tangible times helps us stay both grounded and growing. The post-Jesus lectionary revolves around anticipation of his birth, and annual remembrance of his death and resurrection. The overlay of his life and the ancient Hebrew festivals imbues both with deeper, broader meaning. 

In the agrarian cycle, the feast of Pentecost came 50 days after Passover. Pentecost celebrated fruits, harvest, produce. The beginning of provision from the gardens of the land, the seed gone into the ground and dying now giving life to a multiplicative abundance. Fifty days after Jesus’ resurrection, ten days after his ascension, as his people gathered for that feast, the Spirit was visibly and audibly revealed to be active in, not just a limited priesthood, but all who believed. The miracle was communication, understanding, connection. 

The budding grape vine I planted a few years ago in Sago

After such a dramatic Sunday, an undeniable wave of inexplicable capacity poured onto countless humans, one hardly expects Monday to dawn as “ordinary time”. 

I can only imagine that the brand new community of Jesus-following disciples felt that their time would never be ordinary again.

Our 2025 has lurched through the far-from-ordinary so far. As Christmas turned to Epiphany to Lent to Easter to Pentecost, we turned from our family-holiday (first time together for that in a few years) to annual Serge meetings to launching the new year in Bundibugyo with school and work . . . only to be shockingly disrupted by the sky-high-abnormal routine test and subsequent discovery of extensive aggressive prostate cancer that catapulted us back to America. We urgently began months of biopsy, scans, waiting, consults, injections, pills, radiation, staying with kind friends for weeks and months. . . . and between all that both of our mothers had the roughest stretch of their 9-decade lives, and Serge changed executive directors (planned and peaceful but still a major shift with celebratory events) for the first time in 2 decades. Suddenly, unlike the rest of our adult lives, we are basing our future from the North American not the African continent, and we have a diagnosis that clouds the view of how long that will last.

So the liturgical announcement of “ordinary time” jarred my eye this week. I think we sense the extraordinary more readily.. . . But ordinary is how we actually live. Crisis lasts for a season, but the cycle of the year, the decade, the century keeps turning. The seismic shift of the presence of God with us as a community, with each of us as individuals, is now ordinary. The post-diagnosis, post-pentecost road leads from this week’s doorstep, and it is our calling now to find ordinary ways to live by faith.

The new normal: post-pentecost, we are not alone, the Spirit is inexhaustibly available. And the perennial plan: what does the Lord require of you but to do justice, love mercy, and walk humbly with your God? Perks of mentoring amazing people is that we learn so much from them, and one of my colleagues six months ago shared her “3 words” for the new year. . . . which challenged me to ponder mine. Over several days, what came to mind was this: Mend, Send, Attend. Ok I have a weakness for rhyming, I admit it. But by mercy we mend the frayed edges of an unraveling world by practicing justice, by righting wrongs. And we love mercy as we serve others, sending them forward to thrive and lead and live. And humbly we attend to the truth and beauty of God’s presence all around us, in his word, his people, his world. Every ordinary day draws out from us some opportunity to mend creatively so that hurts are healed. To send selflessly so that others are blessed. To attend to the unseen realities that guard and gird us all. Those three words formed for me before the January bombshell of prostate cancer, but cancer is part of the ordinary path through life for many, many people.

As we walk into the ordinary of a much altered life, we pray that Scott is mended, that every cell is choked by the medicine and zapped by the radiation. And we pray that our 11 teams and countless partners in 6 countries across East and Central Africa keep mending the sorrows that seem to engulf them and their neighbors, that wars cease and hunger is fed. The year 2025 finds us solidly into the third third of life where we labor to send new leaders forward, and our diagnosis makes that even more necessary. So we pray for wisdom and grace to support our kids and our colleagues. In ordinary time, we have to build conscious habits of attending to the important and not just be lulled by what is easily seen. That can be bird watching or Bible reading or poetic prayers. Paying attention. 

Grateful for the great cloud of witnesses that read and pray, that walk into “ordinary time” with us, mending, sending, attending. On both sides of the Atlantic we need a fresh infusion of the Spirit to do justice (even for immigrants), to love mercy (even for the marginalized minorities), and to walk humbly with our God.

 
ORDINARY TIME LOOKS LIKE:

Ordinary tasks: splitting wood for next winter's heat

And hosting my mom and brother-in-law

Great visit from some of our longest-standing friends

Holding zoom meetings with Africa from the wifi in the parking lot of truck stops as we travel back and forth to medical care

Rhododendron buds, signs of new life

And to remember MEND, SEND, ATTEND . . 3 pictures