You think there are things that you want. Nice things, lovely things. Things that add to the place and space you’re in or hope to inhabit.
Things like smooth linen colored a faded red and blue on a background of white, placed on a table as part of a laying, a setting, a prelude to a meal.
But, then you look around you and with present-tense eyes, situational eyes, you see all the things you have too much of, things that, were those in your immediate vicinity to behold, would look like “lack”, yet to you, especially after reading about the Sri Lankan civil war (is that capitalized?), you realize are just Western lenses.
Astrid prayed to our Lord last night that there would be those who rose up and wrote. That there would be those that books would come from and stories shared to help strengthen faith.
I bent over my lap as she prayed this and sobbed without sound, sucking in breath through my open mouth as the snot threatened to drip from my nose.
“I’m sorry, Lord! I’m sorry! I’ll write them, God. Help me to write the books.”
I slip between worlds. I am separate until I join in. I am apart most days. Alone in my thoughts and thinkings as words tumble about and are written in my head.
It’s a disjointed thing; this way of being, the roots of which reveal themselves as I become more aware of the past and patterns of me.
In church last night – although, 7:00 pm during summers in Sweden hardly feels like “night”- Roger was the first one to come through the door. His smile, outstretched hand that turned into an outstretched arm and brief/light embrace, was what brought me back.
Suddenly, I was in a conversation. With another person. It was as if a switch had flipped.
I was connected and a part of the world again, this part of the world again, this piece of this place in this time again.
The sliding into it was fairly painless. I had awareness of what I didn’t want to say and some control over what would come out of my grammatically incorrect Swedish mouth, so, that felt okay and was enough to make it not so bad.
The things I didn’t say we both knew were better to not speak of but his lighting up, his pleasure at seeing me reminded me that I was pleased to see him, too. A soft surprise. A forgotten remembrance of brotherhood and sisterhood.
At that moment, thoughts of Sri Lanka, of sufferings and poverties around the world weren’t thoughts my mind possessed. Instead, I was here, in this church that I remembered God had called me to.
And as Scripture was read, as prayers for others were made, and before Astrid said a word, I felt light. I felt sweet. I felt soft. It’s the difference, I believe between connecting on a human level with another(s) and connecting on a Spirit level with humans.
There is a distinction between being with a body of people and the Body of Christ.
“Membering”, as a verb, last night was one of the easier things I’ve done these last few months.
I wanted to keep it, to catch it, to crawl inside of it and wrap it around my body and my mind so that I never had to slip outside of this belonging again.
“Plurality”, is the new “duality” for me. I used to feel like I straddled two worlds; this and the next, with “next” being the heavenly realm. Now, though, with thoughts of all the current worlds, little places of lived lives – pain and poverty, terror and wars, with memories of self and relations with others, with awareness and watchings of nows and if’s and whens, the worlds I feel tethered to tie themselves with loose threads.
In the sanctuary last night, sitting on one of the chairs set up in an open square, our prayers rose to Heaven.
Everyone offered up something, including Astrid’s prayer for more books to be written. Per asked if there was anything I wanted to say. I said with hesitation that I did but I couldn’t find the Swedish words. He offered to translate and I tried to make it make sense but most of what I could do was ask for forgiveness, ask for help and tell our Lord that we needed “more”.
I have a sense no one except Per could understand what I said and it was not the best “corporate praying” I have done because it felt … not right in the way it flowed, words and spirit to Spirit.
I wished I could have done it better, had found a way to join hard and strong to them so we could be knitted, but then again, what I was praying wasn’t what the rest of us had been praying about.
My prayers were not like the prayers of the others and I felt the awareness of the disconnect but I also knew there was acceptance and openness, of trust extended to my faith and to me.
Roger stood up and had us all join hands. They said the Lord’s Prayer in Swedish. I bowed my head and silently moved my English-speaking lips.
I don’t know how it is that I came back that night, to that church and to these people, but the pledge to God was renewed along with prayers for forgiveness. “Serve” was all He had said to me months ago when it came to this place and I willingly said I would.
I thought I knew what that would look like but wars of the subtler kind, of the sinful self-induced kind had thrown that in doubt. When it came to relations with each other, we were, as a Body, a bit of a mess.
The books I were to write, I knew I had the ability to scribe but the words as they came to me? Ahhh, I wasn’t sure where they’d find their home or how they’d be perceived.
How do you receive a something from a someone who is already, by her very makeup, outside and apart of all that has knit the rest of you together?
How do you understand the typing of words from fingers on a keyboard when they’re not neatly laid out, like vintage linen from a century ago, found in a Swedish thrift shop, easily consumed over a light and pleasant fika?
How do you say that the book you had been trying to read yourself, one that spoke of a world some of the members of your church had grown up in, a world that had not really been spoken of when that country was spoken of, had taken you to yet another place and awareness that warred with your attempts to join them in their island life?
Yet, the books would be written, because when Astrid prayed for it, she also stopped and prayed for me specifically. These people had, over and over again, prayed spontaneously for me specifically.
I wasn’t the only one who sensed I had been called.
I left the meeting and rode home on my bicycle, pausing to wave to Wimar and call out a “hej då!” to him before turning to take the shortcut home. Joy and jubilation filled my heart. I would be HERE again. I would live HERE again.
Staying here, becoming more a part of “here” was a wanting I let myself sink into again.
Ideas and pictures of “next times” flowed in my head. I smiled as I thought I could see a new way, one that combined all the worlds I was in the process of inhabiting.
- The world Bev and I were creating with our books about prayer and pain.
- The world Portland and I were contemplating with our possible work for the benefit of B Corps.
- The life of the Ashram and it’s work in the world with Gerd.
- The serving of in the church. The active and cemented place of belonging, belonging to them would mean.
- The writing of Swedish things; stories, thoughts, slices of life
I had ideas that, upon awakening this morning and looking around at all the “things” that filled my small apartment, felt disjointed.
Maybe it was because I had finally been able to finish the book I had started, which was so unsatisfying in it’s ending I immediately wanted to return it to the library, like a thing which had betrayed me and that I wanted no part of.
Maybe it was as I looked around at the accumulation of “stuff”, which, if I were to place into my “Swedish” life, would look like “not enough”, but to the Sri Lankan’s in the story, would seem an obscenity of riches.
Whatever it was, I knew I had to start saying it.
I knew I needed to do as I had said I would when Astrid prayed that people would begin to write about faith.
Yet, I am not able to for all the other things that want to be said instead.
Jesus and the Real Girl 