This line from today's poetry on the Biola Lent readings site (Temple Gaudete by Lisa Russ Spaar) captures the arc of history.
And the season of Lent simply stops us from slathering on all the substitute salves for six weeks, living in the reality of that wound and waiting for the true healing ointment. It is like washing off a year's accumulation of self-protective comforts, inward focused anesthesia. There may be some bleeding as the wound is cleaned, but that friable surface becomes the site of new growth and eventually, a sturdy scar holds us together.
For us, the 2019 Lent has many layers. This season has coincided with a return to Bundibugyo with all its beauty and brokenness. The journey up is a journey down. Literally, into a rainforest tropical valley, redolent with cocoa and echoing with birdsong. It's a place that could have been the Edenic cradle of life, only it has also become a lightning rod of the curse, an epicenter of malaria and sickle cell disease and excessive infant mortality and malnutrition and, historically, Ebola. A complicated undercurrent of fears stirs up conflict. Once isolated and suspicious, and now rising with more confidence. Yet there remains a thick spirit of hiddenness, passiveness, clinging, lethargy, desperation that drags people down. It is painful to watch our friends suffer. It is painful to hear our team doubt.
It is difficult to write fairly and inoffensively. It is easy to sound overly dramatic, except that when you look back over the trail of people chewed up and spit out, or talk to Ugandans who have lived in many parts of this country and enter this one with such hesitation, you can't deny this valley has some serious shadows. My equanimity falters when faced with ?50 ?60 ?more inpatients, a disorganized pile of mixed files and frayed exercise books, kids on mats on the floor between beds, staff hours late and more than half absent, medications not given, labs not done, plugging person to person to take my own vitals, history, exam, write briefly scribbled assessments and orders that probably won't be completed, eye out of the masses the five or so life-threatening-today kids in the crowd. A wasted pale twin who needs an urgent blood transfusion, a 1-year-old admitted for diarrhea who is hypoxic with pneumonia and needs oxygen, several with racing pulses and untreated infections, a deeply jaundiced 4-day-old, and a 14 year old boy who has bounced to us from several other clinics because no one has recognized his appendicitis. These are all things we should be able to treat, if there is the will, but I recognize that my will is also faltering in the face of so many walls. Later we try to untangle the complex web of stories that tangles us in school issues. We sit and listen, we pray and enjoin. It's hard to know whether that helps. Haven't we been holding this line long enough? Pushing back against these particular evils? Maybe it's just the second knock-down sickness of the month edging me to darker thoughts, maybe it is having Caleb in the unknowable limbo of Special Forces tryouts, or Luke and Abby working day and night through internships, or Julia looking for a job so she can survive on the part-time church work she's doing, or Jack about to be the final Myhre launching from college.
Everything in the world tells us that the answer to "shouldn't this be easier" is yes, in one's later 50s after over 25 years in this work, it is time to have reliable electricity, functional systems, temperatures that don't drain the life out of you, the possibility of sitting on a porch uneaten by swarms of insects, reasonable options to buy groceries or refill airtime or get to an airport. It seems sensible to think that specialized experience should garner some position where people listen and learn? Is this a strategic place to invest so much? Would this team's gifts go further if they were poured out in more receptive climates?
Then the season reminds us, this is the path of the cross.
Oh, the gash.
This Bundibugyo team, and the partners we have in Christ School staff, BundiNutrition Staff, medical colleagues, the construction/compound team, the Bible translators, the accountant and administrators, these human beings are all living sacrifices. If you've read this far, please pray for them and us. For willingness to do hard things; for belief that in that moment the balm will come. For willingness to put down roots in a difficult place; for belief that in that clinging we will find Jesus. For choosing to love a place that wounds us; for belief that in so doing, God's balm will be enough.
And the season of Lent simply stops us from slathering on all the substitute salves for six weeks, living in the reality of that wound and waiting for the true healing ointment. It is like washing off a year's accumulation of self-protective comforts, inward focused anesthesia. There may be some bleeding as the wound is cleaned, but that friable surface becomes the site of new growth and eventually, a sturdy scar holds us together.
Chagall captures the gash and the balm
For us, the 2019 Lent has many layers. This season has coincided with a return to Bundibugyo with all its beauty and brokenness. The journey up is a journey down. Literally, into a rainforest tropical valley, redolent with cocoa and echoing with birdsong. It's a place that could have been the Edenic cradle of life, only it has also become a lightning rod of the curse, an epicenter of malaria and sickle cell disease and excessive infant mortality and malnutrition and, historically, Ebola. A complicated undercurrent of fears stirs up conflict. Once isolated and suspicious, and now rising with more confidence. Yet there remains a thick spirit of hiddenness, passiveness, clinging, lethargy, desperation that drags people down. It is painful to watch our friends suffer. It is painful to hear our team doubt.
It is difficult to write fairly and inoffensively. It is easy to sound overly dramatic, except that when you look back over the trail of people chewed up and spit out, or talk to Ugandans who have lived in many parts of this country and enter this one with such hesitation, you can't deny this valley has some serious shadows. My equanimity falters when faced with ?50 ?60 ?more inpatients, a disorganized pile of mixed files and frayed exercise books, kids on mats on the floor between beds, staff hours late and more than half absent, medications not given, labs not done, plugging person to person to take my own vitals, history, exam, write briefly scribbled assessments and orders that probably won't be completed, eye out of the masses the five or so life-threatening-today kids in the crowd. A wasted pale twin who needs an urgent blood transfusion, a 1-year-old admitted for diarrhea who is hypoxic with pneumonia and needs oxygen, several with racing pulses and untreated infections, a deeply jaundiced 4-day-old, and a 14 year old boy who has bounced to us from several other clinics because no one has recognized his appendicitis. These are all things we should be able to treat, if there is the will, but I recognize that my will is also faltering in the face of so many walls. Later we try to untangle the complex web of stories that tangles us in school issues. We sit and listen, we pray and enjoin. It's hard to know whether that helps. Haven't we been holding this line long enough? Pushing back against these particular evils? Maybe it's just the second knock-down sickness of the month edging me to darker thoughts, maybe it is having Caleb in the unknowable limbo of Special Forces tryouts, or Luke and Abby working day and night through internships, or Julia looking for a job so she can survive on the part-time church work she's doing, or Jack about to be the final Myhre launching from college.
Everything in the world tells us that the answer to "shouldn't this be easier" is yes, in one's later 50s after over 25 years in this work, it is time to have reliable electricity, functional systems, temperatures that don't drain the life out of you, the possibility of sitting on a porch uneaten by swarms of insects, reasonable options to buy groceries or refill airtime or get to an airport. It seems sensible to think that specialized experience should garner some position where people listen and learn? Is this a strategic place to invest so much? Would this team's gifts go further if they were poured out in more receptive climates?
Then the season reminds us, this is the path of the cross.
Oh, the gash.
This Bundibugyo team, and the partners we have in Christ School staff, BundiNutrition Staff, medical colleagues, the construction/compound team, the Bible translators, the accountant and administrators, these human beings are all living sacrifices. If you've read this far, please pray for them and us. For willingness to do hard things; for belief that in that moment the balm will come. For willingness to put down roots in a difficult place; for belief that in that clinging we will find Jesus. For choosing to love a place that wounds us; for belief that in so doing, God's balm will be enough.
CSB girls cheering the football team on to victory
Stephen and Basime running the concession stand
The football team, so far 3 wins/0 losses with a goal differential of 17 . . playing again in a few hours
Mary, Pamela, Susan, Topista at CSB
Dramatic skies to match the mood
Spent an afternoon teaching Serge Apprentices on "Unsettling Cultural Situations"
Bundi team courtesy of Stephanie taking photo, after an evening Ultimate Frisbee game. Love these people and hopeful for prayers to sustain us all!
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