It’s cold and dark these days. Since returning from break, and especially from the bright lights of Londinium, I’ve been sleeping with the curtains of my French doors left open to the street lamp of Wittlingen. It helps, somehow, to see a small bit of light coming through the window as I fall asleep. I feel less trapped; our town’s lone street light represents an intangible freedom that floats outside of my bedroom window, and its company helps me to rest.
I’m unsure of what to write, but I know that I need to. My thoughts are jumbled, and come to the forefront of my mind in clear bursts of emotion that seem largely disconnected. I just finished reading a novel that is brilliant, thought-provoking, and deeply disturbing. I feel the weight of an entire continent on my shoulders, and can feel my heart tugged toward an Africa with which I have little connection. I was there once, and said that a piece of my heart would always remain, buried in the red dirt, brought back to me on occasion by whiffs of rooibos tea. There is a child there, Mbusa Lukimani, whose survival is inextricably tied to my thirty-two dollars a month sent to an organization in Colorado. Other than that…? The Dark Continent seems impossibly out of reach. Though The Poisonwood Bible is fictional, I know that it is based in fact, and the fact is that Africa is a place I cannot relate to, but somehow long for. What I long for is this: simplicity, and freedom. Simplicity of life- of limited possessions and to not know the want of consumerism. Freedom, perhaps, is an illusion in any place, but there is something about Africa that seems to draw the heart to a wild abandonment of convention. Who needs cars, big houses, piles of books, and 10 options of cereal to eat every morning? Walk. Live off the land. Share with your neighbors. Wear the same clothes. Really, does it matter?
Sometimes I have trouble figuring out my place in the precarious balancing act that is our world economy. They say that technology, media, travel, has brought our world closer together, but I’m not so sure. We all know a lot more about each other, but what of it is really true? We know events and names and places, but have we seen them? Do I know people in Gaza who are running for bomb shelters, or people in Africa who are fighting for survival against all odds of disease, famine and governmental instability? No. But my heart breaks for them just the same. I have to grab myself by the heart and pull it back to where it lives: not Israel, not Africa, but Germany. Wittlingen dorm, to be exact, and called to live and love there just as surely as the sun rises and sets each day on this little town nestled in the Black Forest. I suppose I could make my life here seem as simple, free, and picturesque as life in an African village if I used the right words. Perhaps that’s how I need to think about it. We all have to survive, and there’s a certain amount of work that goes into making that happen. And in the in-between, we look for enjoyment in whatever places we can find it. The more stuff we accumulate, the harder it can be to find the joy, but it’s always there to be found- usually in the company of another person rather than the idolatry of a material thing.
I find my comfort today in the words of Psalm 107.
39 When they decrease in number and become impoverished
through oppression, trouble, and sorrow,
40 the Lord pours contempt on their princes,
causing them to wander in trackless wastelands.
41 But he rescues the poor from trouble
and increases their families like flocks of sheep.
42 The godly will see these things and be glad,
while the wicked are struck silent.
43 Those who are wise will take all this to heart;
they will see in our history the faithful love of the Lord.
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