June 24
Karen Blixen
once said, “The cure for anything is salt water- sweat, tears, or the sea.”
Daktari
agreed with this home remedy at last, so we went for a few days where the salt
water of Zanzibar would wash over us enough that we could begin the painful
process of physically leaving Kenya. Some would call it a beach vacation.
I called it
our “Last Resort in Africa” time.
June 30
This was the
night we flew.
There was a
none-too subtle American lady there at Jomo Kenyatta International
Airport. I call them the Pushy-Affluent-White-lady
types (PAWL). She didn’t like that
our family had 13 pieces of luggage to check in. “Hey! What is it blocking the
line? How can I get checked in?” (How can I serve my own needs in the midst of
bigger needs?) I smile and apologetically wave to say, “It’s me. We are moving. Sorry.” (In Kenya everyone always says
sorry to express sympathy with what the other may be feeling at the time) And the PAWLady bellows across the
lines “That’s not my problem”.
Well, it
actually was her problem
precisely. And sadly she was the
one losing face in front of every Kenyan there for showing her “temper” in
public.
Ah,
Americans. Is that what you’re
going to be like?
I began
having second thoughts about boarding the plane.
July 12
Silver
sprinkles of shad minnow raining upwards from the glossy surface of the
Tennessee River,
The
whitetail near the road and myself, we shared a secret.
It was about
how the beauty stopped me in my tracks,
How it
brought a tear to my thankful eye.
How lovely a
white and pink tipped puff of ethereal, ephemeral delicacy
Could be
growing on the hardiest terrain of steep banked country roads.
A wild
mimosa tree, proud as a peacock with the glorious flowers for feathers- but
silent too, like the whitetail that went bounding through the woods after it
got over my non-sense.
Ah, America.
There is
beauty in the rare quiet here.
July 16
It’s so hot
you can break a sweat without even working and you can wear shorts to let your
legs breathe in the sunshine and freedom of living like a PAWL. Oh, Lord I am one of them after all,
aren’t I?
Jupiter and
Venus are still up there in the night sky. We saw them from Zanzibar too. It feels like Jupiter and Venus are closer to me than my life
in Kenya now. How can we even be
on the same terrestrial ball?
But the round
white Queen Anne’s Lace is crusting the fields like manna every morning.
What is it?
It is like daily
bread in this wilderness time.
Reminding
me: He provided for our ancestors here.
He will
provide for my needs too, one day at a time.
There is
beauty in taking life one day at a time.
There is
Life in taking beauty one day at a time.
And then
Uncle Glenn pulls up in his farm truck.
He’s saying
to his sister on the phone
“well, I
gotta go down to thu co-awp
and git some
fertilahzer, and you never know what might come up then,
so I cain’t
say fer sure what time I’ll be there”.
That sounded
just like Africa.
It was a
beautiful and gloriously grounding moment for me.
Karen Blixen
also said “God made the world round so that we’d never be able to see too far
down the road”.
August 16
Sunday. Today we got to join in the Lord’s
Supper.
Little round
flakes of white that we eat. Not
ephemeral, nor ethereal, but solidly grounding the truth of heaven come down to
earth.
What is it?
The Bread
that came down from Heaven for the Life of the world.
Every side
of this world.
Meeting our
needs one day at a time.
