Simon's Nairobi Diary - Archive 13

27 December 2005 9:12pm

A pastor from the area died two days ago. He was coming home Christmas Eve from the midnight service of his church. When he went over a hill (only 2km from the school) a barrier was in the road. When he got out to move the barrier, shiftas came out of the brush and shot him. They took everything, stripped the car down, and left without any witnesses.

Its easy some days to forget the difference between where I'm from and where I am, but stuff like this is a solid sore reminder.

26 December 2005 10:30pm

Today, no longer do I see my life as something that is or isn't. It slides. It gains brilliance and then dies to a flicker. A day will pass, spent in stagnant vanity, and I sink to the sheets crippled. Another will pass, spent in delightful (often haggard) service to Love, and I enter sleep wonderfully normal. Not always one or the other, but more often shades between.

Cannot the heart stop in one already dead? Or so alive that the stopped heart is only a nuisance before continuing on? Let the thing that produces listlessness, then, be shouldered off. Let the One inside grow bigger, then, and life with Him.

23 December 2005 10:39pm

Tatu'ed into the city, walk'ed into the theatre, and saw Narnia. The best part of the movie was when british Susan Pevensey said, "But we can't be heroes. I'm mean, we're from Finchley". This comment brought a roaring laugh from the mostly British audience. It was a good movie: worlds in coat closets, talking animals, evil and good (for once) distinct. Do I end the movie as the credits roll?

Can we say there are no mysteries and miracles? Do we claim this on the very week where we celebrate a virgin giving birth? I can't do it. To limit the Maker to only working in how we can see and only bound to how we are bound makes too small a god (mungu mdogo) for me to worship. He's got too many sparks in his eye, too many suprises in his sleeve, and too much extraordinary love in his heart to remain in the box of safe understanding where we'd like to place him. Does my theological rulebook say God is limitless? Interesting rule.

22 December 2005 12:24pm

I baked bread last night. Mingled the sugar, salt, butter, yeast, flour, and kneaded it the way I remembered my mother doing it. Two hands, like CPR. Added a cup of oatmeal to make it interesting. As I put the two bread pans in the stove I saw the dial only went to 250 degrees. I assumed it was because the propane tank could not not put out gas fast enough. As 11 rolled around, my first loaves came out burned and dense. Apparently I forgot the Celcius to Fahrenheit conversion, burning the outside and killing the yeast because I baked too hot. (sorry yeast) Still good though, just thick.

I brought my first bread to Amadeus' place for breakfast this morning. We ate it with a local raspberry jam, drank instant coffee, and played a Gershwin CD. He described living in cold-war Germany. I listened and fed a piece of cheese to a chicken because it was wierd.

20 December 2005 10:45pm

I sit outside in a canvas chair. Its very late. A full moon booms above. A german shepherd dog named mocha lays uninterested nearby. I sit and listen to the night: distant noisy security dogs and a distant drum playing its usual syncopating rhythm : eight quarter eighth - eighth quarter eighth - eighth quarter eighth - eighth. Large white fluorescent floodlights scatter the landscape into harsh little islands. A branch breaks the semi-silence and falls onto the metal roof, rolling down one side and clattering to the tiled ground. The night resumes its noiseless litany.

Such confusion. What are the basics?

19 December 2005 7:48pm

Kibera Slum

18 December 2005 4:58pm

Church is simply a long chore 60% of the time, but sometimes its good, and occaisionally it can even be revitalizing. The solitary mind and the books whittle my love to passionless laws and facts, a bloodless cross that points to death, but then an experience gets put in the path to end my daze and reopen the eyes. Today it was Amazing Grace at Vineyard which blew the dust off, and I'm just left standing there wondering how it was even possible to forget this. Funny how the beauty of revival is held not so much within it being a wonderful discovery but a wonderful reaction, like how a big inhalation while swimming has the unintended result of the body rising to the surface. What a stupid struggle it is to bust loose of the walls of our ordinary into being regrounded into the reality of life. But I wonder if it is battles like these, the small and awful, which are the true line in the sand of the faith.