Some things come with the status of mission trip. Firstly you have to find a long and impressive list of things you intend to do but fully accept that many may lay unfulfilled, secondly you have to find christianeese sounding reasons why you are going to do them, and thirdly you have to expect everyone back home to know what you are doing, as they are the wonderful people hopefully funding this little exploration of life and love and god's big old world. However having your blog read at part of the Sunday sermon is a little more than I had expected! I love my tata very much! Also falling for the locals causes some interesting conundrums, but I diverged for my point. I've been here a week, a full week, but I still feel like I've achieved so little and so much lays like a broken jigsaw puzzle waiting to be organised, completed and finally used to do something I can't seem to stretch this metaphor to. Three months may seem like a huge swathe of time to some but I'm well aware of how prone to procrastination and dawdling life can be here and three months is really such a short stretch. I feel the need to make decisions. To take things in hand and to talk to so many people who coloured my last stretch here but whose faces I have not yet seen. To start to tick off the todo list and program the timetable. But actually it's the things you stumble across, the pathways that somehow meet, there we find sparks that bond, there we find the whispers of divine intervention. And it's these whispers that I can't seem to find. If I heard a whisper, if I could discern a spark amongst the multicoloured flames of life. There I would find the confirmation that I'm not simply filling the hours with things that I could do, but with the things I'm called to do. I saw the spark before I left, it glowed bright amongst the ashes and called out to be fanned, it called me to return and so I booked flights and came to once again seek that spark, to fuel it with the oxygen that it so craved. I wonder somehow if the spark though is the mountain-top experience for the missionary, the view suddenly spectacular and obvious, before the valley walls push you into moving letters on paper and long coffee meetings where nothing more than laughter is brought to life. If so then this pilgrimage of faith, this journey of discovery, this list of todo's and gentle prayers need no whisper because it's already there, needs no signs of sparks for the fire burns irrespective, and it can not be quenched. Even if we can't see it there is no need to cry 'my god my god why have you forsaken me' for every sound speaks 'my child, my child, I will never forsake you'.
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Where is home? What is this notion I sometimes wonder. On my arrival back to Novi Sad I walked into my new accommodation to be greeted by friends hiding in the kitchen area, and drinks and chats. Even the fatigue of the 48 preceding hours and the slow creep of sleep coming over me as I sat on the sofa didn't stop me feeling like this was a place that I belonged, even if only temporarily. It leaves me questioning my time in the UK, for I did belong there also. I sat in Sunnyside, at whichever service, and felt like I was in a family, a place that held me and sheltered me, and in which place I could shelter and hold those around me. It's been a lovely first week back in the flat land, saying hello to people, rediscovering the night-life, walking through porta, twisting my head round duel linguistic conversations, gentle afternoons and slowing to the different speed. It's a human trait to want to find 'home', a search that is lifelong and continuous. But in our understanding of belonging we know that this is a far country, it's not the home we will untimely belong to, no earthly place is. But for the time being we go where we can hold, support, be challenged to serve and grow, and no matter now much I enjoy or struggle being in the streets of Novi Sad, or in the lanes of Berkhamsted it's the servant call to go where we are led. For now I feel that the dust of this city is my place of calling, but I live with the possibility that this temporary trip will be just that, a temporary solution to the need to be called, the need to belong, the need to find home! For weeks i have not told the story. i have fragmented snippets out of the whole, drips off the ice sculpture and bounced light off the chandelier. for weeks now i have trailed around the events of the last six months and yet somehow the story is so much bigger than these little words i try to encase it in. i talked to my supporters and tried to write a story, but it fell short of the grandeur and dark depths, i spoke to the youth and it held the passion but not the process. it's become bigger than me this trip. beyond the comprehension level that i can give it, a hurricane of consequences leaving ripples that bounce off rocks and mingle with others till the pattern become unpredictable. and i ceased to want to understand it, i ceased to want to tell the story. i want to live it. to throw the religious away and keep the burning faith, to walk into blast furnaces without asbestos suits, to hold us the altars of unknown and claim identity, to give my fish and bread knowing that however insufficient that it will be enough. the story as pdf However for those who want the story, who heard the jackanory music or wished they had sat in the vicarage the file can be found by clicking on the picture! |
The other siteWho is GfeefGfeef is the name that my writings have been under for some years. As far as I know it's unique to me. Originally from the UK, I now live in Serbia but continue to have a passion for childrens and youth ministry. Archives
October 2014
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