Simon's Nairobi Diary - Archive 32

31 October 2006 11:35am

"I wish to thank God," speaks my friend Nemoni during prayer at the start of Hebrew this morning. "I am finally recovering from typhoid".

Without fail, every day this term, Nemoni is always the first one to class. He also only gets As. And I am reduced to an insect among giants.

30 October 2006 5:45pm

There's this kid who lives near me. He and I both speak rudimentary Swahili, but he sort of has an excuse, being three years old and all. I came back to my room today and he sort of popped an "eh!" from afar. I knew who it was, though he was hiding behind a bag of charcoal. "Eh!" i shouted back to him. "Kuja!" (come) And he did. His little steps bobbled him down the concrete steps and around my ankles, barely making it to my knees. Its hilarious trying to talk Swahili to him, because his words are spoken in this weird choked burp talk. He answers in cute kid mumbles. I pick him up and hold him to my face, and he grabs my cheeks and pulls the skin around. "Agagaga," he noises towards me, baring his teeth and squinting his eyes. "Agagaga!"

"Ninaenda nyumbani," I say, telling him I am going to my room. "Eh?" he choke burps with glee. "Nyumbani," I say. "Kwa heri." (goodbye) "Heh-reh," he smile-choke-mumbles. And it is all better than good grades.

27 October 2006 5:00pm

Recently, I've just been blown away by the idea of Jesus being God, that theologians look at Jesus and commonly agree that he was always God and always human. That Jesus was living, always, as a perfect person. All his actions were holy and good. All his actions. Now, most people would be nodding off at this point. These are non-debated issues. The dual human/divine nature of the triune God incarnated in the flesh of the Christ.

But then I read verses of Jesus getting frustrated (Mark 7&8) angry (John 2) tempted (Matt 4) crying over the misled (Luke 19) weeping over the dead (John 11) falling to the ground in distress and grief as he pleads to his friends for their company (Matt 26). And if Jesus was perfect and God-incarnate, then these actions were perfect as well! And then my whole understanding of perfection is undone.

"Be perfect" is what Jesus tells us in Matthew 5, and I've always assumed this to mean I must attempt to be both sinless and a deep sea of almost bovine tranquility wherever I go and through whatever I experience. I've always known this to mean that I must never be disturbed. But if God as a human, Jesus, the maker of the universe and the weaver of humanity can have such anguish that drops of blood flow from his pores, then maybe its holiness to have anguish, frustration, anger, or temptation. All of a sudden, the inability to embrace the disturbance of reality is a corruption of our nature, a result of our fall. For a people such as the ones I'm around, an allowance to cry and the removal of that awful church-permasmile and hearing a difficult life as something of heaven, well it is all real good news.

25 October 2006 8:14pm

Taken in Amsterdam with my cousin over coffee. This picture makes me happy. And the baker smiling through the background is like icing on the cake.

23 October 2006 10:57pm

Walking past sunset today, I failed to notice the nearly footlong slug on the sidewalk. That was, in all estimation, the most slickest sickest step of my life.

20 October 2006 9:37pm

Over a year ago I hit rock bottom. I realized that my life was becoming woven with the creator of the universe, but I felt no proximity to Him. I feared that such a distant God and human, in attempt to be meshed in identity, would only result in something shattered. If I was to truly become anchored to God, intimacy was not an option but a means of survival. I have known enough who have not walked that way, and their hollowness is to my spirit like nails on a chalkboard.

I had felt God before. I can remember many thrilling occasions when his holy breath would glow hot on my cheek, times I was so stirred that I couldn't love people fast enough. Times when a lukewarm hotdog was a royal feast and the air itself perfume. But these times were only memories, coins in the mind to be taken out and admired. They were not a god who is not only loving, but here.

So I began to offer speech to the air, and in honesty. I told God, "I cannot feel you." I told God, "I know of you, but I don't know you." The scriptures told me to wait upon this god, that I should be still. This still waiting was awful. The out-of-doors is where God has appeared to his people throughout the scriptures, and so I went there to beg. I have this vivid memory of going deep into the woods to sit on a stone, singing there every psalm I knew by heart. My voice fell and I sat waiting for lightning and voice from the sky, but there was only silence, and God might as well have slapped me in the face.

I wonder if he did. I wonder if he made me interpret awful abandonment so as to understand the reality of many people's lives. Before we drink, we must thirst, and that day in the wood I felt such violent emptiness, that any more of it and I would have trashed the whole lot and dedicated myself to myself.

But it began to ease, and then one day about a month later I remember praying and noticing God's presence - an extraordinary sensation of his spirit within and over me. It did not appear in sudden thunder, but had been growing unnoticed, and the moment I saw it I knew it for what it was. And now I barely have to think of him and I am covered in a comfort, compassion, and holiness that has originated elsewhere. It is solid and sustaining to my every day, and doesn't wane when I do. Going to the kitchen to eat a sandwich, I walk within a very perceived embrace. That day in the woods seems to have been God painfully scraping the crust off my eyes, that I might be lovingly alert to his being there all along.

Times are coming in the future when he will veil himself again. The sensation of his intimate proximity has the tendency to become self-fulfilling, that my prayer stops being about becoming good and starts to be about feeling good. But so much has changed that cannot be withdrawn. Becoming stilled and turning to face the creator has become precious, that I cannot go a day without it. Living is: eating, sleeping, working, community, and taking time to be close to God and contemplate his love and grace and goodness. God is worth existing for, because he exists. I know he stretched and stood up from his grave so long ago, because I was with him this morning.

18 October 2006 6:18pm

It was gorgeous today. The golden sun seemed so warm and inviting overhead that it felt like it was humming on my skin. An iridescent sunbird with a hooked beak was making a nest in a tree in front of the classroom. The sky was solid blue, not a shade to the side. Everything has greened and flowered from the recent rains. All outside seems to have grown in magnitude, as if becoming more in itself. With this theme were chalk practices of the alphabet on block T's wall.