Daring, Dangerous and Deadly
Adventures…
My friends (that's you lot) are
always saying, 'You're sooooo sensible'. Well, let me tell you, these
past few weeks I have been engaged in the most daring and reckless of
adventures, adventures which could turn your knuckles white and your
eyes pop out in amazement. Just read on my friends, read on… (apart from
my mother that is)…
The Sunday service had just ended.
I'd had another work-out chasing the chickens (now with five babies in
tow) out from the chapel (my routine now involves, in theory, a scissor
jump with back flip, landing in the splits to increase my surface area
on the ground thus preventing chickens from going beyond myself. In
reality it involves me in a dramatic routine of jumping, flapping and
clucking to envy the best of the chickens, and results in a few
omelettes). Ahem, anyway, I looked yonder over to my garden, and decided
I should have an adventure. I am after all in Africa. The land of lions
and rhino and drum beats and mighty waterfalls. So, I decided I should
do some gardening.
Ever heard of the triffids? Well,
they live in my garden. Fierce, flesh-eating plants that are
particularly fond of white girls in their twenty-something's. I decided
an attack was long over-due. Ever read the passage in Ephesians about
putting on the armour of God ( 6.13-17)? I have a new version. I put on
the belt of gritty determination, the breastplate of thick-skin, the
shield of sun cream (factor 50) the helmet of a plastic bag over my head
so no one could see me, and the sword called a hoe.
I swung the hoe high into the air and
brought it down with a thud into the soil. The chickens scattered
leaving a cloud of feathers and red dust. The bairns ran and hid behind
the trees. The lions ran up the trees. The giraffe's legs knocked. The
sun hid its face. It was a fearsome sight. Unfortunately about two
grains of soil were dislodged. Humph. I swung again, accidentally
catching the concrete pavement instead of the soil. Humph. I swung again
and, third time lucky, dislodged some soil. Oh dear, this could take a
while. By the end of three hours, I had sprinkled more soil over my head
and my house than was left in my garden, but at least I had defeated the
triffids. I had also found some copper so I'd obviously got a bit
carried away. I also provided great entertainment for the students. No
longer afraid to watch secretly and politely behind the curtains, they
emerged along with the chickens and the children and the neighbours and
every bloomin' Tom, Dick and Harry to watch the afternoon's
entertainment. Even the Bishop came out. He looked a bit embarrassed and
so went back in. One lesson in gardening, and one lesson in being a
willing object of laughter – completed. Tick the box. Being able to
laugh at yourself and lose all sense of pride, dignity, sophistication
and 'I can do anything' attitude, is always good. Even if it is under a
head-sized plastic bag. And even if the next day you have to gently roll
out of bed because you've found muscles you didn't know about and you
have to shuffle across the floor to minimise movement. Ouch. I know what
old people feel like now.
Adventure number two: er, let me get
back to you on that one…
I read a quote this week that said,
'Approach love and cooking with reckless abandon'. I might approach
gardening with recklessness, but my idea of reckless cooking is boiling
an egg and slapping it on bread. Once I tried making nshima and
succeeded in sticking the wooden spoon and the gloopey mixture to the
pan, and once I tried making chapattis and succeeded in dousing the
kitchen with flour, welding my hands together with the glue-like mixture
I had made from adding too much water to the flour, and adding another
layer of burnt bits to my pan.
Anyway, I thought about what it meant
to 'love with reckless abandon'. I immediately remembered the woman in
the gospels who poured her expensive perfume or oil over Jesus' head and
wiped his feet with her tears. And all in front of a room full of men,
risking being called a looney, risking being rejected by Jesus, risking
looking like a complete emotional freak, risking her own understanding
of herself. But she did it anyway. I think this was reckless love.
And I think I've seen reckless love
here. Let me share a few of the pictures with you.
Reckless love is when you open up
your cupboard and realise you only have one meal left for your whole
family, but you give it joyfully to your visitor anyway. My cleaner,
Loveness.
Reckless love is when you have never
had much of a chance to be loved, but you decide to give all of your
love to one person who you know won't ever fully be able to appreciate
that love. The young girl Mavis, orphaned and used as a house-girl by
her aunty, looks after her niece like a mother and pours out endless
love into the one-year old niece.
Reckless love is forgiving someone,
knowing they will do it again tomorrow. Shine stands by her alcoholic
husband, and covers her children like a mother hen when he starts to
slam doors.
Reckless love is throwing away the
voice of reason and following the beat of your heart. Justina ignored
the jeers of her friends when they found out she was 'going back to
school at her age', the protests of her employer and bank manager, and
the voice of doubt in her own mind, to come here and study to be a
Mothers' Union worker.
Reckless love is about believing in
miracles tomorrow. It is about not letting weeds grow between your
dreams and clinging onto hope. Reckless love is about losing someone so
close and yet daring to love again. Reckless love is about letting go so
that someone else might take a hold. It is about striding onward in a
cloud of doubt. Reckless love is about fighting a losing battle, so that
it may be won in the future. Reckless love has no conditions, criteria,
or regrets. Reckless love is about breathing out everything in your
being into the hand of the wind and not knowing where it will land or
what will become of it. Reckless love, is about being human again. It is
loving like we have never loved before. It is about abandoning
everything to chase after and catch the most beautiful butterfly you
have ever seen.
After the woman anointed Jesus, he
said 'I tell you the truth, wherever the gospel is preached throughout
the world, what she has done will also be told, in memory of her' (Mark
14.9). It always strikes me that this has never been done. No one knows
about her. Why? Maybe because the rest of the 'world' finds reckless
love embarrassing. It is a bit OTT. It is heaped together in the pile of
emotional clap-trap, and classed together with stories of fairies and
angels, of leprechauns and lands of rainbows with treasure at the end,
of candy-floss clouds and chocolate rivers and waterfalls of red wine.
But it is only embarrassing to those who don't know what it is to
receive it, or give it.
At the beginning of this email, I
talked about 'daring, deadly and dangerous adventures'. Although the
garden and kitchen are undoubtedly the places of such, I think the most
daring, deadly and dangerous of adventures we can undertake, is that of
loving with reckless abandon.
Do we dare to love recklessly? Ever
think God was the easy, soft option? It is God who dares us. God in the
child lying in our arms. God in the stranger, the friend, the unwanted,
the disfigured, the unloved. God in the abandoned. Do we dare? I have
seen people here who dared. They are the heroes of today. And I know
some of you dared to love recklessly too – that's how I could recognise
it here.
Prayer Points
- Thank God for bringing the
students back safely to the seminary after the break. Thank God for
the wonderful community atmosphere, the laughter and learning that we
share, and for the friendship and companionship.
- Pray for the staff at the
seminary. We have some difficult decisions to make at the moment, and
we need divine guidance!
- Pray for the son of Mama
Tulapona (teacher here). John has a serious heart condition at the age
of twenty, and is quite ill at the moment in Dar-es-Salaam. Pray that
God would bring healing to John, and comfort and peace to Olga.
- A priest committed suicide this
week in Luapula. Suicide is reportedly quite rare here. Reactions to
it are sometimes seemingly without compassion, and the family left
behind bear all the force of it. Pray for the family and the church
congregation as they come to terms with the sad tragedy.
- Please pray that I may be able
to juggle many balls and time wisely, that I may see where God's
priorities are, and be willing to change my priorities so that they
are in line with God's. As my time draws closer to an end here, please
pray that I keep awake to the happenings here and stay committed to
trying my best at all things.
As ever, thank you for reading this
far, for your prayers, and for your love.
May God help us all to know what it
is to receive the love of reckless abandon, and give us courage and
instinct to love recklessly.
Abandon all and let your love run
without bounds. Drop everything, kick off your shoes, and run, run, run
as fast as you can to chase that something so beautiful...
With much love (almost reckless),
prayers, and laughter,
Em xxx
