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

Happy or Alarmed: Mother's Day 2025

 Everyone had a mother, so it's really the only universally experienced relationship. And both mothers themselves and the holiday today can conjure either gratitude or grief, or most likely some of both. In our church this morning the woman who led the prayer time did a solid job of celebrating the act of mothering, the women in our lives who bring life to the world both biologically and metaphorically. But she also recognized the pain many (most) carry from being hurt to some degree by the crucial mothers in our life, or the grief of motherhood denied or motherhood wounded by loss. It's messy. 

Because real world love IS messy. 

Two moms now (above) and then (below)

With Nola, my paternal grandma

My maternal grandmother Winnie died when my mom was 21

My grandmothers  and mother and mother-in-law worked hard to create home out of the materials they were given, to raise children who were nourished with support and love. They all outlived husbands and they all worked to provide and they all delighted mostly in reunions with family, in cheering on the next generation or two or three. If I had to distill the nectar of what they passed on to me, it might be loyalty. A determination to put their kids' well being into the priority place, to truly believe that mattered more than any other accolade.

Because mothers are primarily an ally in the mess of the real world.

And fighting for the well-being of children has become more difficult in 2025. In my 37 years since graduating from medical school, childhood deaths have decreased by more than half (60% decline from 13 million to 4.8 million a year, even though there are more kids), and "mortality ratios" of deaths/births have decreased similarly from a global 10% dying to about 3.5% (and a measure of Bundibugyo's suffering and reason to locate there as a pediatrician, their ratio was over 30%, some estimates close to 50% all that time ago). We mothers have celebrated better access to safe deliveries, to family planning, to adequate food, to immunizations, to education, to treamtents for malaria and diarrhea and TB and HIV. It matters. None of us anticipated that Mother's Day 2025 would find us reading this week's medical journals with concern that that progress would stall, and mortality would reverse it's fall and begin to climb.

The medical journal Lancet using massive amounts of data estimated that because of America's withdrawal this year from our commitment to fund "PEPFAR", a long-standing public health initiative, a million more kids would be infected with HIV, a half a million more would die, and almost three million more would be orphaned in the next five years. Most of that impact will be felt in Africa, our other home. Most of the people affected will be people we know and love, people who are sending me "Happy Mother's Day" texts.

The New England Journal of Medicine wrote "The Trump administration’s gutting of USAID and other foreign-assistance programs marks a break from decades of evidence-based practices that have improved lives throughout the world. In addition to pushing millions of people into poverty and leading to an estimated 160,000 or more avoidable child deaths each year, these reforms will undermine health and the economy in the United States."  The Journal Nature estimated USAID cuts would cost the world 25 million lives.

Mother's Day 2025 is a day to resolve to align our hearts with mothers. My mother aligned hers to ensure my survival and my capacity to care about the world. Because of the women on both sides of our family, I have children of the body and heart both, those that I birthed and many more that have been part of our life. I am so delighted by talking on a family face-time with a handful of them today, and receiving greeting texts from across the world wishing my happy Mother's Day. 

Let us continue to work and pray for mothers everywhere, and their children.

Above and below, goodbye for now to some of our Ugandan kids

My early Mother's Day gift was a week visit from Julia, who brought cheer and capacity to see us through this strenuous course of treatment.

This is what most visits with kids look like now from our call today. . . 

And I enjoyed the peonies in our host home in Baltimore as my Mother's Day flowers!

Presence is the only promise

 Upheaval pictures our life and many others in 2025: it carries the image of quaking earth, of erupting lava, of crashing wave and upturned boat. Forces far beyond our control, on scales of impact beyond our neat boxes of explanation. Cancer, an internal rebellion of unruly cells risking fatal endings. But also the shock waves of cancer in loss of home and community, change in vocational approach, days so completely different, every week accumulating weary struggles. Our microcosm perhaps pictures on a single human scale the cosmic view that stuns us all this year. The most deadly wars in Africa's DRC and Sudan; the most geopolitically volatile conflicts in Palestine/Israel and Ukraine/Russia; the natural disasters in Myanmar and frankly widespread floods and even resurgent measles. And an underlying sense of the ascendency of might makes right, of self-justifying greed, of pride in flouting the boundaries of law and care for the future generations that had restrained our worst instincts.

2025 has shaken us all.

Upheaval can also clear new paths, and that is the story for our mission, Serge. Even before we received an unexpected 100x normal bad news test result in late January, we had planned to come back to America this past weekend for the Board Meeting that honored our outgoing Executive Director Bob Osborne, and commissioned our incoming Executive Director Matt Allison. Bob spent 20 years leading Serge by embodying service, a weight-bearing connection point between the resources of North America and the gritty messy global work. We more than doubled in number of teams and places, and probably tripled in impact and finance. Bob wisely intended this timing to hand over to the generation 20+ years behind us ... but even planned change after so many years of crafting a responsible Board and a resilient base, in the cultural milieu of 2025 feels like upheaval. 

Bob praying for Matt (Scott as his first team leader was one of those asked to commission him in prayer)

So it was truly holy ground to see this heaving up land so well. Highlights for us were:

• Matt's dad Brad, a former Board member and key pastor in the American Serge church base, preached from Psalm 46. God does not stop the mountains from moving, the sea from roaring, the nations from raging, but IN all that He does promise His presence. Be still, and know the present help. That is what we have been praying to hold onto, that the cloud of obscurity and risk is also the cloud of God's presence with us.

• We were the "field report", I guess a missionary comes to every board meeting but this was our first time ever (since we were interviewed by the board in a church basement to join Serge (then World Harvest Mission) as the process in 1991 that is now an entire coordinated week of assessment and orientation!). Talking about our Area, gratitude for the people and projects, and honest pleas for prayer, is always a privilege.

• Worship, conversations, prayers, meals, fact to face human interactions with the leaders of our Home Office as well as the Board who supervises the entire operation is just plain heartening. The work done all over the globe has dedicated and prayerful support evidenced here.

Brad and Matt, father and son

Board gathering around us to pray, and then a group photo below

Home Office leadership, current and former board, spouses and friends gathering Sunday morning for worship and commissioning

Bob's trademark Hawaiian shirt style spoofed by current and former board members. They testified to Bob's personal individual care in them as humans, which enhances their ability to work together to change the world.

In a year of upheaval, these friends are a rock we can lean on. We started together in college committed to serving an isolated  place with an unwritten language and significant medical and development needs. Bundibugyo for the first stretch together, then they handed off to us and filled gaps all over the world. So glad to still be in the fray together!

Praying for Bob as he takes an emeritus role (and a grandfather one with his 4 grandkids), and Matt as he steps into the target of suffering to love all of us, and his wife Rachel and kids too. In a world that has been heaved up by politics and injustice and pathogens and discouragement, let us pray for the only promise we need, the only promise we know to be true: God is with us.

Radiating peace into reality

Six treatments down, 22 to go in the first course of external beam radiation therapy (then another 28 in the second). Daily Scott has to be precisely positioned on a table of technology, scans pinpointing the targeted areas of cancer, four humming metal arms emitting unseen rays of energy as they rotate around his body. The procedure is meticulously calculated to maximize disabling damage to the cancer cells and minimize the same to the rest of the body. The radiation itself can't be felt or seen or heard. Healing mysteriously, we hope. 

In the first hours and days post-resurrection, Jesus quietly appeared to Mary, to the women, to questioners along the road, to the gathered group. His initial approach was to ask questions himself, invite reflection. To the sorrowfully desperate women he said "Rejoice" (literally, be glad about grace) and to the gathered group hiding in fearful disarray he said "Peace be with you" (probably literally shalom, that Hebrew peace that communicates depths of justice, the world put right).  Grace and peace, joy and justice.

These are more than greetings, more than polite wishes. The risen Jesus radiates power to change the world. Saying "rejoice" is not a rebuke for feeling sad or a nagging correction to cheer up. His presence and words actually embody the grace of joy, the gift of a different disposition, the change from all-is-lost to all-is-new. Saying "peace" is not a crunchy longing to get away from trouble or a guilt-trip correction to worry, it's a bestowal of an actual remake of the world order.

Scott still has cancer, he will have it the rest of his life. The world is still broken, as we watch our East and Central Africa Area facing multi-country multi-militia scrambles for power and resources that leave the majority of the people poorer and threatened (10 minute video explains some of the back story here).

And yet, change radiates.

Silent and unseen, unfelt, unheard, the waves and particles of energy from the external beam radiation contraption enter the body to resist the evil of cancer, to transform the inner landscape on a personal scale. And on a cosmic scale, the one who said he's making all things new has begun that entropy-shifting reality. We get signposts of hope along the way, for us this week a dramatic fall (99% drop) in the prostate antigen. For the world, we see child survival statistics and a million metrics of shalom. Hours before his death, Pope Frances addressed the global Catholic Church on Easter with the truth that hope is no longer an illusion (he referenced the opening verses of Romans 5, that hope does not disappoint because the resurrection changes everything). A subtle power radiates out from that moment of grave-burst all the way up to this one. From a cave in Palestine to a hospital in Baltimore and a border in Congo. 

Hope becomes a view of the world informed by quantum-physics of faith. Prayer pulls us into the post-resurrection reality . . . we need it, and so does Africa. Thanks for journeying with us.

In between therapies, a walk through Baltimore above, and Easter Sunday with the Harries' (Abby's parents who helped connect us to care at Hopkins, so grateful)

Waving palms, turning tables, and a reversal narrative of more radiation than radiance

Sunday

An artist depicts miraculous research in the radiation oncology clinic

Jesus, palms, and donkey: reversing expectations

In a day of presence, voice, and handwriting (no printing let alone radio, no film let alone internet), what strikes me about Palm Sunday this morning is that enough people had heard of Jesus that the pre-festival inflow of pilgrims to the capital turned into an impromptu parade. A community organized by word-of-mouth managed, person to person, to simply tell the stories in a way that kindled hope. Jesus' followers tried to be media consultants, urging him to sound more anti-Roman, more revolutionary, more like a winner. Instead he chooses a donkey foal, and the hard call to forgive and serve, refusing to promise any platform on which to build nationalism. He never shied away from principles for living together in peace and justice, he told the billionaire to sell everything and give to the poor, he scattered the cheating money tables. But he refused to be put in the position of enforcing laws. He chose to appeal to his listeners' hearts and leave the possibility of refusal open. 

No podcast, no substack, no blog, no call-in show, no appearances on the talk-show circuit, no book or movie contracts or awards, no tik-tok, no tweets/whatever X is called now. The one time the disciples got a glimpse of the outside-of-this-world-and-time glory on a mountaintop chatting with Moses and Elijah, they wanted to build circus tents and sell tickets. Instead as soon as the bright cloud dissipated he went back to his usual theme of upcoming suffering. Shortly later, he chooses the donkey colt to connect his journey to Zechariah 9. The same verse that contains the phrase we hear now, from the river to the ends of the earth, does so with a picture that excludes the war horse and the battle bow, that speaks of Jesus' gentle rule.

Such a reversal, conquering by allowing the worst to proceed, by riding peacefully into the trap that has been set, comes with a cost. The crowds who cheer at the novelty and promise of anti-Roman power will jeer when their storyline is crushed. Fame fizzles at the first disappoinment.

Monday

Jesus walked in and out of the city, staying with friends in the suburb of Bethany, but also intentionally and faithfully entering the center of communal life, telling stories and healing undesirables and sparring with the intellectual crowd . . . as the shadow of death loomed darker day by day. 19 years ago this week my Dad let go of life day by day too, as ALS finally sapped his breath on Easter night. For us in 2025, this week marks the beginning of a 6-week phase of daily radiation therapy. Some parallels: staying with friends in a suburb, daily trips in to treatment, removing clothes, strapped to a device, marked and targeted. Separated from the people and life we have cared about until now. A turn towards powerless inaction. Coming face to face with the evil of a fatal disease. 

Scott is not Jesus, but Jesus offers for those He loves to follow in the small imprints of some of his steps. This week we pray to trust that the radiation which kills cells will extend life. That enduring will reap good. 

Note the cherry blossoms and keep reading . . 

I am finding some resonance with the trees that bud before producing leaves. This reversal narrative radiates flowers out of starkly empty branches. To do so, sap must have been stored from better times, and the energy expenditure on blossoms looks like a risky extravagance of faith, a gamble prioritizing the next generation of fruit and seed without a sure extension of this season's life. That seems about right.

The gamble of trees that flower before they can restore their photosynthetic life above.

The parallel we reach to hope for in this season below:

kids we visited pre-radiation, and today's reminder from our Bundi "kids" that the work goes on

 

The Buckhannon River, and the River of Life

John 7:

37 On the last day, that great day of the feast, Jesus stood and cried out, saying, “If anyone thirsts, let him come to Me and drink. 38 He who believes in Me, as the Scripture has said, out of his heart will flow rivers of living water.” 39 But this He spoke concerning the Spirit, whom those believing in Him would receive; for the Holy Spirit was not yet given, because Jesus was not yet glorified. 

The Buckhannon River has flowed by my life since its beginning, and after decades of distance it is now once again the first thing I can see (and hear if I brave the cold) as the night melts into daylight. (Scroll down two posts if that doesn’t make sense). In Bundibugyo for most of my adult life, we were just up the bank and across the road from the Nyahuka River. Both are obscure waterways that nevertheless mean life to the towns nearby, sources of water and laundry and fishing and escape from the heat, pathways of transportation in the past, threads that hold communities in place. 

So when the lectionary this week included Jesus framing the Gospel as a drink to quench thirst, that certainly sounds like good news. And when the drink is so refreshing the drinker becomes a river of water for others . . . beautiful image of the Abrahamic "blessed to be a blessing".

And yet a river does not generate the water, a river channels the water. Rivers depend on rains. On clouds, storms, snows, melt, that seeps into springs and tickles into streams. A river rises and falls, and it’s not the river’s choice. Sometimes our river is low and murky, sluggish, with exposed rocks and logs, depleted. Sometimes our river rustles past with clarity and peace. And sometimes it is racing and churning, powerful and unpredictable. 

A good reminder for a life of missional service. We are the channel, but not in control of the source. Sometimes we are barely trickling by, and sometimes a prayer for rain leads to a chaos of current. 

In East and Central Africa, multiple countries feel vulnerably dangerously depleted of hope, of help . . yet change could bring chaos. Our DRC team remains evacuated to Uganda, even as Uganda sent their own army into DRC. People all along the Albertine Rift face high prices, lack of food or vaccines or fuel, displacement from their homes (7 million in the broad area, almost a million more since December, and 100,000 who have crossed borders to become refugees). The river of aid feels dry, due to the overwhelming need and the dangers of response but also the American political climate. We are all in a cautious inhale to know if this is the new normal, if the tense search for a balance of incompatible powers . . all he while knowing that a downpour of war could drench us all. 

Every day we try to be supportive at distance, to care and pray and call, work on budgets and meetings and emails. To be a river of blessing for those we love, and those we barely know. Yet our own river feels drained too, by weeks of intense medicines (3 now) and the frequent drives to our appointments, preparing for the next stage of daily intensive radiation. 

Last year I prayed Lord, enlarge my heart. This year the promise of Jesus to simply flow through our hearts sounds more possible. Though we are low, weary, and heavy, we need only to wait for rain, in our Area and in our medical care, through prayers the Spirit can bring life. Let us be waterways.

Spring Conspiracy Theories

Equatorial living for all but two of the last 31 Springs (?) renews the wonder of the season. Bulbs planted decades ago, divided and dispersed, erupt splotches of bright yellow from nearly colorless ground before the snow has even melted. And that melt gurlges into the river's hum, augmented by clouds blowing north. The grey trees against grey meadows have buds only seen up close, but now the leaf litter through the forest is heaped and srcatched where deer search for early meals. One morning we realized through the windows shut against overnight frost that cardinals are back, cheeping out territory.

I'd forgotten Spring as a conspiratorial season. March still calls for morning fires in the woodstove, yet some afternoons the sky turns glorious with sun. New life whispers more than shouts. You have to pay attention, to seek signs. Summer's arrival still seems debatable.

The quiet greening of the fields, the occasional trill of unseen warblers, precludes smug confidence that summer is inevitable.

March along the Buckhannon river

Which in 2025's overlap of Spring and Lent reminds us of how the Kingdom comes, how God's will is done, on earth as it is in Heaven. Not by armies, courts, kings, force, drama, sudden "wins".  Not by an earthquake of flowers, growth, fruit and warmth, but by an almost imperceptible progress. By change so subtle one could argue it's not real . . . until one day you realise it's warm enough to swim, and berries exceed thorns.

    

I'd like DRC, Rwanda, Uganda, Burundi, Malawi, and all their neighbors to sign peace agreements and abide by them, to have fair-trade mean that every village gets a dividend of coltan and gold profits, to wake up to adequate hospitals and electricity and roads and food. I'd like Sudan and South Sudan to do the same. I'd like Kenya to listen to their people who hit the streets in protest last year and find non-violent paths of change. And like the disciples, as none of that reliably seems to be happening, we wonder why Jesus doesn't bring in a few angel armies. Or at least a theocracy that harkens back to David and Solomon. We wonder why we get budding bulbs, not full-grown grains.

Jesus talks a lot more about wait, delay, seeds, and don't-tell than about winning. Even the proverbial wedding parties have rejectable invitations, not overpowering presences. 

Spring gives us a tangible picture of slow-motion resurrection. 

Praying to keep attending to that by faith. As schools turn out another twenty, another hundred kids who care for their neighbors enough to forgo dishonest gain at their expense. As our ophthalmology trainees in Rwanda surgically restore sight to another hundred, even a thousand people. As our Nairobi Bible Storying team spends a week encouraging another dozen or two dozen leaders who face arrest for their faith. As our surgeon in Malawi visits a handful of prisoners in jail, or our OB in Burundi teaches interns to do ultrasounds. As our theology professor in Kapsowar holds another class. As our team leader in Uganda gathers school kids to learn about God through nature. All tiny specks of incremental good outpacing evil, not by might but by the Spirit. 

Those buds of East/Central African "Spring" represent hours and weeks and years of cost to people who left home comforts, and represent generous decisions by hundreds and thousands of supporters, and represent even less-seen intangible grace in hearts and souls. A conspiracy of change more powerful than rulers or riches. And they give us hope for the change we need, too, the hidden melt of cancer cells this Spring and the the flow of the river of life in Scott. Come Lord Jesus, in all your quiet disguises making all things new.

This bud is in the picture below . . just hard to see in the dust of snow!

Our days are spent remote-working with teams in Africa, then driving back and forth 4.5 hours from WV to Baltimore, consults and plans and procedures and pain and hope.

Went for coffee yesterday next to the clinic and this guy watched over our table.

The Spring Conspiracy pictured here on the road to Baltimore day before yesterday . . heavy dark wet cold clouds, yes, but God is in the cloud, and shines an arc of light to remind us to hope.

So, walking by faith, into the drab woods, towards the sun.