i have always been a words girl. i enjoy visual ideas but the written and spoken word has always hit my heart the fastest...kinda like when a heroin user decides to inject the poppy-powder-poison into their veins so it hits their blood stream immediately, rather than being a bit patient and just smoking it--sorry i'm a drug counselor. it was the most immediate comparison i could think of!) but, it seems i think more in images than i ever have before. cyclical images visit my mind often these days.
the first cyclical image i had was based on the following experience : i rode on a ferris wheel a few weeks back, and i walked away not with the view FROM the ferris wheel, but the view captured in my mind when i turned around to see it as we walked away. a circle of lights, poles, faces moving slowly around...all played against the shade cast by table mountain at sundown.
the next image was a rosary. my best friend in high school was catholic, kind-of. her mom was deeply spiritual and gave me my own rosary, tibetan wooden beads strung on a earthy-colored string, red i think. this past monday, listening to my African Worldviews lecturer talk about his days as a catholic boy in kwazulu-natal triggered my memory. i started drifting into thoughts of how i used those prayer beads to discipline myself in prayer when i first became a fan of my friend, jesus.
as i sit back and reflect on my life from time to time, i seem to neglect the HUGENESS of this reality = i still keep in touch with nearly every friend i had in myanmar. that was six long years ago that i lived in yangon. that i hung out with buddhist monks. really tall fitness trainers (a weird site in asia, home of the not-so-tall people). impoverished young men asking me to help them get to america every other second, always fueled by their desire to be a trained pastor (based on that old wives tale which has apparently spanned the globe about how you have to go to seminary to be a teacher of the gospel. i always wonder what school jesus graduated from).
now that i am on a time zone that is somewhat similar to my asian friends, i get more chance to keep up with them day to day. some of them have joined gmail chat. others are on facebook. technology has made so much possible.
my friend R said recently in an email "the development of a country is based on the attitude of its people. The attitude of the people is trained under their education and history. the background of education and history is religion." he is a former burmese monk now talking about jesus in churches in indiana.
email has revolutinized religion. daily i chat with my monks about jesus, amongst talk of fleeing myanmar, girls,how fat they think i am now, and when am i gonna have a baby. i just got off a chat with a young pastor who is dating a girl for the first time. he just started his own church in myanmar. i got to encourage him for a moment. my old friend, the tall trainer, he used to have very intersting conversations with me about moses, which made me a bit nervous and also a bit amused. just the other day we chatted about what the past 6 years have done to his buddhist faith.
basically i'm trying to say that everything god gives us has a cycle. we never say goodbye for ever. we have to let go most of the time, b/c god gives us things for seasons. as i write this i'm thinking of heaven and how our whole LIFE isn't about hanging on to anything or anyone. nothing is permanent, and that is true even though we may hate to apply it to the good things in our life.
but wow....3 years ago to the T, i sat in mourning because i knew my clinging to my plan to go to asia, was just that...my plan. it had once been god's...it started with god when i moved there the first time. but i keep clinging. god was asking me to let go now, and i wouldn't. so, three years ago i moved rather unwillingly to south africa and my life has changed forever b/c of that choice. and for a long time i have really struggled silently about how painful it was to let go of asia, and all those friends.
but everything has a cycle. and these relationships are like my own ferris wheel or rosary. they are my moments and my memories strung together on a sandy string. but the knot is not tied. there are still beads to be added.
**i know this post is all over the place, i have to get back into the habit of thinking in a way that makes sense on a blog, much less to my husband :)
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