Dear friends and family,
Let me start by saying that I am safe, happy, and mostly healthy (except for a few inexplicable rashes that seem to be taking over my arms and legs). Many of you have heard about the attacks on Garissa. People have been telling me that they are praying and sending good vibes and I am so thankful.
On Holy Thursday, we got a call from a friend asking us to pray because a young woman she knew at Garissa University had texted, “Pray. Al-Shabaab has us.” She was in a closet hiding and could hear windows shattering around her. I had never even heard of Garissa so Susan brought out the map and showed me where it was. Throughout the day as we struggled through our normal business of language school and work, we heard different reports from people around town though many still hadn’t heard the news. Susan asked Joseph, our newspaper man, if he had heard anything and though he hadn’t, he kept saying, “Lots of people are going to die.” We kept in touch with our friend, asking if she had any news and trying our best to support her any way we could. It felt very strange and wrong to try to be productive while people were hiding in closets and feigning death in an attempt to survive just a few hours away. When we went to mass that evening, the last supper carried more weight than it ever has for me.
After mass, we got a call confirming that the young woman had been rescued. We were so relieved, but the conflict was not yet over and not everyone was accounted for. We don’t have a television at our house, so we huddled around Susan’s cell phone which gets BBC and listened to the reports while eating leftovers for dinner. The heaviness grew as the death toll rose and we heard more and more about what people went through and what the families are now going through as they search for their loved ones among the living and the dead.
It was very difficult to rejoice the coming of the Lord in the midst of all of this tragedy so close to home. I told Judy that I was feeling really funky, even as I tried my best to shake it off with exercise, baking, music, and prayer. I wrestled with this feeling to try and name it and finally I realized I was feeling vulnerable…intensely vulnerable. It was this paralyzing feeling of impermanence and insecurity, this soaking of pain and fear, not only my own but that of the people around me. Paralyzing is not even the right word. It was numbing, as if all life had lost its sharpness but also its shimmer.
On Easter Sunday, our little trio here prayed together. Judy chose the reading where Mary Magdalene goes to the tomb and finds that Jesus is no longer there and says, “They have taken the Lord from the tomb, and we don’t know where they put him.” This echoed in my soul as I thought, how many of those parents and students are thinking the exact same thing. I thought of how distressed Mary Magdalene must have been, not knowing where Jesus was, perhaps feeling worried and abandoned. And then I thought, but at that time, resurrection and redemption had already happened. Jesus had already risen. They just didn’t know it yet. The great and cosmic Love had already come back into the world, they had been saved, but they just didn’t know the ending to the story.
Like Mary Magdalene and the disciples, I think we here in Kenya have also wondered where God is, felt the suffering of a Good Friday and the agonizing waiting of a Holy Saturday. And I do believe that something even as horrible as this can be redeemed by our Lord, can be resurrected and somehow used for good, though this is hard to see through all of the shadows and the pain. It is hard to see that we can choose the hope of the empty cave over the heartache and confusion of the exact same empty cave. We can choose to see the redemptions and resurrections happening right in front of us everyday amidst the suffering and the misguided actions of the few. Though I don't know the end of the story, I do know that God, Allah, Yaweh, is infinite enough to hold it all and to hold us all as we hold one another.
Let me start by saying that I am safe, happy, and mostly healthy (except for a few inexplicable rashes that seem to be taking over my arms and legs). Many of you have heard about the attacks on Garissa. People have been telling me that they are praying and sending good vibes and I am so thankful.
On Holy Thursday, we got a call from a friend asking us to pray because a young woman she knew at Garissa University had texted, “Pray. Al-Shabaab has us.” She was in a closet hiding and could hear windows shattering around her. I had never even heard of Garissa so Susan brought out the map and showed me where it was. Throughout the day as we struggled through our normal business of language school and work, we heard different reports from people around town though many still hadn’t heard the news. Susan asked Joseph, our newspaper man, if he had heard anything and though he hadn’t, he kept saying, “Lots of people are going to die.” We kept in touch with our friend, asking if she had any news and trying our best to support her any way we could. It felt very strange and wrong to try to be productive while people were hiding in closets and feigning death in an attempt to survive just a few hours away. When we went to mass that evening, the last supper carried more weight than it ever has for me.
After mass, we got a call confirming that the young woman had been rescued. We were so relieved, but the conflict was not yet over and not everyone was accounted for. We don’t have a television at our house, so we huddled around Susan’s cell phone which gets BBC and listened to the reports while eating leftovers for dinner. The heaviness grew as the death toll rose and we heard more and more about what people went through and what the families are now going through as they search for their loved ones among the living and the dead.
It was very difficult to rejoice the coming of the Lord in the midst of all of this tragedy so close to home. I told Judy that I was feeling really funky, even as I tried my best to shake it off with exercise, baking, music, and prayer. I wrestled with this feeling to try and name it and finally I realized I was feeling vulnerable…intensely vulnerable. It was this paralyzing feeling of impermanence and insecurity, this soaking of pain and fear, not only my own but that of the people around me. Paralyzing is not even the right word. It was numbing, as if all life had lost its sharpness but also its shimmer.
On Easter Sunday, our little trio here prayed together. Judy chose the reading where Mary Magdalene goes to the tomb and finds that Jesus is no longer there and says, “They have taken the Lord from the tomb, and we don’t know where they put him.” This echoed in my soul as I thought, how many of those parents and students are thinking the exact same thing. I thought of how distressed Mary Magdalene must have been, not knowing where Jesus was, perhaps feeling worried and abandoned. And then I thought, but at that time, resurrection and redemption had already happened. Jesus had already risen. They just didn’t know it yet. The great and cosmic Love had already come back into the world, they had been saved, but they just didn’t know the ending to the story.
Like Mary Magdalene and the disciples, I think we here in Kenya have also wondered where God is, felt the suffering of a Good Friday and the agonizing waiting of a Holy Saturday. And I do believe that something even as horrible as this can be redeemed by our Lord, can be resurrected and somehow used for good, though this is hard to see through all of the shadows and the pain. It is hard to see that we can choose the hope of the empty cave over the heartache and confusion of the exact same empty cave. We can choose to see the redemptions and resurrections happening right in front of us everyday amidst the suffering and the misguided actions of the few. Though I don't know the end of the story, I do know that God, Allah, Yaweh, is infinite enough to hold it all and to hold us all as we hold one another.