Somehow it always happens around this time of year. I get restless, restless to be anywhere but
here. I walk down the street and two of the little girls in my neighbourhood
have a conversation across the block in rapid fire Hindi. It makes me miss the richness and
mysteriousness of India. I read blogs of
my friends still in Uganda, and it brings me right back there and makes me want to get on the next plane back. One of them
writes about travelling to Northern Uganda and how being there shatters her
into a thousand pieces. I sit back and know, because I too found my soul in shards
simply by walking on that ground and so many days I still feel like I'm blindly looking for the missing pieces. By meeting people terrorized by Joseph Kony’s
armies, and young people who had been abducted into his armies. That is
something that never leaves a person, looking into eyes that have lived things
like that.
I walk through my neighbourhood with my dog and I’m reminded
how last year I just about had a meltdown from doing this very thing shortly
after returning from Africa. How simply walking down the street and seeing the relative opulence
almost did me in. How being here and hearing the complaints I heard made me
want to look at them long and ask them if they really knew what a hard life
was. How in so many ways, I still struggle with those very same things, but somehow they have been tempered. Perhaps I have realized that being there, and then being here changes a person for the rest of time, and how life might just have to be lived with all this in the background from here on in.
But today, as I walk through that very same neighbourhood,
even in the height of my restlessness, I am reminded to love my life here. As I’m
greeted by name by half a dozen people, I realize that I like the way I’m known
here. Because I know that it’s taken this long, but somehow now, I have
community here. My neighbour insists I come eat a hamburger and situate myself
right smack in the middle of her family reunion because they want me to be part
of them. Another comes and tells me in her soft Scottish accent that she would
like to water my bush. I walk down the street and get asked about my dog by
another half dozen neighbours. They love her, even though she sometimes finds
it hard to lay down her fear and trust someone she doesn’t know. That in turn
is what I love about them, how they see past that, and see into how far she has
come over the last year she’s been mine. As isolated as I sometimes feel after
returning from cultures where community is the absolute essence of life, I’m
reminded that it is possible here too, it just takes longer and requires more
effort.
I often run in this neighbourhood with Wilson in tow. These
people, they see me often, and they wonder what I chase. Sometimes I wonder
that myself. Maybe it is simply, more of
this. More life, more community, right here, right now, until that time I step on
a plane and land somewhere that isn’t here.
“And yet, the desire for “more” is not inherently bad, but
it is often misdirected. What we need is a relentless appetite for the divine.
We need a holy ravenousness. Our craving souls can turn and become enthralled
by a goodness that is found in the presence of an all-glorious God. There is
only one infinite source of satisfaction that can satisfy our bottomless
cravings. A taste of His supreme grace is enough to lure an appetite long held
prisoner to lesser portions. If stolen water is sweet, lavished grace is
sweeter.”
-Jason Todd, Relevant Magazine.
