Sometimes, Tourism is Okay: South Africa Days 6 and 7

My overarching rule for travel, under which all the previous rules fall, is: Don't be a tourist. Don't go where the tourists go, don't act like tourists act, don't buy what the tourists buy. Do your research and find local places you can eat at and buy from and support. Sure, when in Paris, go to the Champs de Mars, see the Eiffel Tower, take a picture or two. But don't let that be your only experience of Paris, hopping on and off a tour bus and buying kitsch souvenirs from vendors who set themselves up in places so that they can take advantage of loud rich lost Americans. I have found that if you travel as the tourists do, you miss everything important about being in another country.

But sometimes, it's good to be a tourist.

The Kwalata Game Lodge is on a Big 5 (elephant, lion, buffalo, rhino, leopard) game reserve where you stay in thatched roof cabins, participate in group activities, and go on game drives, which are basically what you think of when you think of a safari. We went on three of them, including one that left around 6:15 in the morning, so that we could see with our own eyes (and binoculars and cameras) free-ranging animals that in America you can only see in the zoo.

We saw cheetahs and ostrich and wildebeest and giraffes and hippos and a turtle and got caught in wicked beautiful storm, but the question is, why are we doing this astoundingly touristy things?

Well, Kwalata lodge was founded by a local teacher who took his kids out into the bush to give them a new experience and then grew from there. Kwalata helps support the local artist who owns this shop:

It supports this preschool:

They call traffic lights robots here. It's one of my favorite things. 

It supports a greenhouse and pottery shop:

It supports this dance troupe, which we saw before we ate lunch at this local restaurant, also supported by the game lodge:

And it marries together tourism with preservation, so that we can see all of these animals:

Ostrich: bigger than you think.

Giraffe: bigger than you think.

Zebra: bigger than you think.

Wildebeest: bigger than you think, but also definitely big enough to kill Mufasa.

Impala: not a car. 

Hippo: not what you want for Christmas. This one was angry at us. 

Find the Pumbaa and her babies! 

No animals, because there was a wicked storm.

There is a complicated relationship between the tourism industry and the local economy, always. If you've never thought about that connection in the US, I recommend The Florida Project for a wonderful story well told focusing around the children living in extended stay hotels outside of Disney. But South Africa has the infrastructure to bring in tourists and here at Kwalata, at least, that's feeding back into the local economy and also enabling students to imagine a different future than what they might imagine in the townships. And if they can go away and be successful, they might come back and help where they came from live better.

If tourism helps that, I guess I can be a tourist.

Church: South Africa Day 5

On Sunday, we went to church. 

Church here did not feel like church back home. Even the way people said it made it carry more weight. We went to church, with heavy emphasis on both the ch's. Our tour guides wanted to come to with us to church. Two pastors, one of them a former bishop, came with us to church. When we arrived, everyone was dressed to the nines, greeting each other, then heading in yo pack the sanctuary. Church back home is a place you go to and get your weekly worship in, like an errand. Church in Soweto is an event.

An event was made out of our presence too. The sanctuary held maybe 700 people, with plastic chairs at the end of some of the pews and extra benches and chairs that stretched back into the narthex, and still the pastor chose to seat us at the front as honored guests, introducing us at the beginning as seminarians from “the land of Trump.” And since we were here, he had assigned his seminary intern to preach so that she could preach to her peers. Two of us read scripture and at the end of the service, the professor who organized the trip was brought up to say a few words to the congregation. By that time, though, we'd been in church for three hours already, so I can't be sure anyone was really listening to Eileen. After the service, there was a meal for us and for the church leadership, and it was made clear that this was a privileged meal to partake in.

I would love to tell you about the content of the service, how glorious it was to hear what was essentially Anglican chant (this is a Methodist Church, after all) sung by their award-winning choir in African languages and African harmonies, how powerful it was to see a young black woman in a headwrap deliver a message about transformation that was deeply entrenched in the scriptures, having to pause every line for the translator and yet never losing her rhythm or her passion, how joyful the seemingly never-ending communion line was. I want to talk about the involuntary chill I got when two women of the congregation offered intercessory prayers, kneeling in the chancel and speaking with fervor, jumping between languages as they prayed. I want to describe for you the offering, how the baskets were full both time money was collected, and explain all the different uniforms that those in different societies and organizations in the church wore. It was a sea of red and blue with white highlights. I want to talk about the powerful women of the church. I want to talk about the abundance of children who all stayed for the entire three and a half hour long service. I would love to describe for you the way my heart jumped when we sang O For A Thousand as our first hymn. Even stumbling through the Xhosa, it was a wonderful moment.

It would be a delight if I could tell you more about those wonderful moments but the truth of the matter is, the moments are all that I have. My brain kept interrupting my experience of the service with a long and unkind mental argument that I won by the end. So while everyone else was talking about how powerful the Spirit had been in that place and how life-giving the worship had been, I was shutting down, trying to steal some recovery time for myself at our privileged lunch.

So let me instead tell you about what I learned about how I want to pastor from that service and from the conversations after. Because it's an interesting thing about pastors-- we are meant to be humble servants of God shepherding a congregation, but the job requires a touch of bombast from time to time and as such can attract people with big personalities looking for an audience. Of course, some congregations are looking for that kind of a pastor and that can be a feedback loop that can be dangerous if people aren't paying attention. I'm not a deeply Augustinian thinker, but I do think that pride can be a damaging thing when it's sinful.

And of course, there's that interesting phenomenon of maleness in ranks of the clergy, even though globally, and especially in Africa, the majority of church attendees are women. If you're reading this, chances are you've talked to me at least once in my life, and if you have, you've heard from me about the challenges of being a woman doing church work. The traditions and the current systems, formal and informal, of the church make it a challenge to be heard and respected as a female clergy person. The situation in the Methodist Church of Southern Africa is complicated at the moment. Last year, they passed legislation saying that until the ranks of bishops were at least 40% female, no new male candidates for bishop would be considered. Then last week, one of their former bishops made disparaging remarks about female clergy. There is pain and hurt and frustration in the church because of it.

So when this pastor brought all of us into the vestry, along with a good portion of their award-winning choir so that we could be sung to and prayed over and given the seats of honor in the sanctuary, I knew that this was not how I wanted to greet guests as a pastor. While I can't be sure of the cultural differences at play here, preferential treatment with a side of showiness is a type or posturing that I have no intention of participating in.

And while the pastor gave up his pulpit for liturgy and preaching, he never gave up his church. From his announcements at the beginning to his presentation at the end of the service, where he used our presence as an excuse to lecture his congregation on the different organizations he felt they should be involved in, he was in charge. I felt grateful for my ministry internship, where I've been entrusted with the entire service many times. When I'm a pastor, I intended to practice trust and sharing in worship. After all, it's not my church. It's God's and the community's. I want to freely give it to capable hands.

And when he introduced Themba Mntambo, the former Bishop, and his beautiful wife, and told all the future pastors in the room that they should follow Themba's example in finding such a beautiful wife, I felt confirmed in my conviction to never speak about a woman's appearance before her ability. Kedibone Mntambo is a powerful pastor in her own right, full of her own passion and strength. She is sharp and capable. In a culture where women of good behavior are expected to wear a dress and cover their heads in church, her pantsuit and lack of hat made a statement in solidarity with the other female pastors throughout the connection who had been put down by their fellow clergy's comments. If I wanted to be like any pastor in the room, I wanted to be like Kedibone, able to stand and speak for justice without having to say a word.

Now, all of this was an undercurrent in the service. Even though I noticed the awkwardness between Themba and the pastor during the introductions and paid attention to what was said when and by whom, it took some time unpacking with others to see what was going on. There were other good moments of genuine Christian affection, like during the passing of the peace, or when Themba offered words of encouragement to the preacher after the service. And, as I said, the music was glorious. Even struggling as I was, it did not feel like the service had lasted three hours. I imagine that had I been able to mentally engage in the service, I would have missed these subtle signs of strained fellowship.

We have hard work to do from Sunday to Sunday. Church may be an event, but the life of the Church continues throughout the week, and it is during those days that we are the most challenged. How do you reconcile with your brother so that the Church might be whole? How do you learn to respect your sister so that the Body of Christ might be complete? How do we do all that internal work while also feeding those who are hungry, giving water to those who are thirsty, welcoming those who have travelled far, clothing and sheltering those who lack protection from the world, and visiting and caring for those who are sick and in prison? How we do all this work while standing for justice like the prophets and like Mary? Our strength to do this work comes from our fellowship and our worship and so we need our church on Sunday. But if we aren't doing the work Sunday to Sunday, we are missing the mark.

Cultural Conversations: Soweto

Part of going on a trip that is, essentially, a two-week-long cultural exchange is, of course, interacting with the culture. You get some of that through museums and heritage sites (which was part of the impetus behind visiting the Cradle of Humanity site) but you get more of it from being in the places with the people and just living life. But if you don't have a year or two of your life to spend living abroad, and when you're travelling with a group, it's hard to organically have that kind of interaction.

And that is how I found myself sitting across from two young Sowetans, awkwardly grasping at natural conversation between practicing Zulu greetings and introductions. We were being hosted at a lady's house and we sat on plastic chairs under a tent in her front courtyard while women and men from the community gathered in their best clothes to talk with us over lunch. I'm sure we had much more in common than came out in the stilted sentences, but I struggled to hear with all the conversations around me and had to ask for things to be repeated. They waited on questions that my brain, tired and still a little jet-lagged, couldn't come up with. I was grateful for lunch and still more grateful when the small group conversation transitioned to a discussion with the entire group. In the big group, we talked politics and compared our presidents and discussed the role of remembering our history and reconciliation and community. It was fascinating and enlightening. 

But to my brain, which is rather more used to easy success, the group discussion made my earlier conversation seem like even more of a failure. The young man I was talking with wanted to travel, to eventually leave Soweto and live abroad, and had a blog and a music business. The young woman had two children, one the age of the kid I nanny, and had helped cook the meal we had. I could have asked questions about why he wanted to leave the township, especially since many of the other South Africans I've talked to take such pride in where they live and the community they have there. I could have swapped stories with her about caring for toddlers and cooking for families. I could have asked her what books she read her kids, what their favorite toys were, how much her parents help with raising the kids, what other work she did, what she studied in school. I could have asked any of the million questions I have about speaking so many different languages (even though they taught me Zulu and spoke perfect English, their primary language was Sotho). I felt like I had squandered and opportunity because I was tired and felt awkward. 

The awkwardness was, of course, not just meeting new people and not being able to hear. Soweto is a township. Well, a bunch of townships, since Soweto is actually short for Southwestern Townships. The townships were created when the apartheid government decided that black people couldn't be anywhere near white people. The houses are small and piled close together, even in the formal settlements, where we were. In the informal settlements, where the people are basically squatters, there's no running water, except from a spicket down the street, and no electricity. If you're looking to do poverty tourism, to show people “how bad it is in South Africa,” you could take them to a township like Soweto, or Alexandra, and they could snap exploitative pictures to their little misunderstanding bleeding heart's content. 

Now, I know that living in the townships is different than what people might expect. There is a deep sense of community in the townships. The people who live there are not as impoverished as you think, financially or culturally. There are vibrant art scenes and strong communities of faith. And of course, Nelson Mandela and Archbishop Desmond Tutu famously have houses on the same street in Soweto. Two Nobel laureates are nothing to sneeze at. I know all of this and I still struggled to form questions about life in the township. At every turn, what I wanted to ask felt rude and insensitive and laden with stereotypes and so I didn't ask. It'd be like saying, “So I understand that you're poor but you're happy? Explain that to me” or “This seems like it could be a pretty violent place. Is it violent?” or “So what's it like being black in South Africa? How do you feel about white people?” None of those are the questions I wanted to ask, but I feared that they were the questions behind the questions I wanted to ask. No matter how much I disavow blatant racism, I know that there are still racially-biased thought patterns in me and I worry that they might make their way out of the hiding places and into the world through my mouth. And so I was awkward.

It is difficult to have organic conversations about race and the challenges facing people of different racial groups with someone from another country that you just met. There's trust that must be built and if you only have a few hours, that trust must be assumed. It's a challenge to have these conversations without one person or the other feeling like they're on display at some point. I enjoy eating like the locals do. I like observing cultural celebrations. I like digging deep into conversations. This lunch in Soweto should have been for me. But as the Sowetans taught us a few dances and songs and told us to join in, I wanted to be anywhere else in the world. A tired, awkward little white girl, standing in the corner, shuffling her feet along in the middle of a complicated cultural exchange.

The Rules: South Africa Days 2 and 3

I have rules when travelling abroad. 

1. Don’t talk too much. You will inevitably sound like a loud American. 

2. Don’t dress in brand-name clothing or wear white sneakers. You will look like a rich American.

3. Pay attention to your surroundings but don’t pay too much attention to any one thing. You’re already a mark because you’re a loud rich American. 

4. Know where you’re going ahead of time and be sure of your directions. If you stop to ask, you will reveal yourself as a loud rich lost American. 

5. For God’s sake, don’t stop to take unnecessary photos with your gigantic new phone. That puts you one step closer to being a loud rich lost American who now needs to find their way to the consulate because their phone and fanny pack have just been stolen. 

I broke all these rules (well, except the clothing one) when we went to go visit the archaeological dig at Sterkfontein. You could barely keep me quiet as we explored the mouth of a cave to learn about how fossils are deposited there. The world around me ceased to exist once we were taken back to look at some of the fossils and casts—all I could focus on was the skull in front of me and the millions of questions I had about it. I had no idea where I was going through the whole day, because I was part of a tour group, and I occasionally found myself lost on the site as I went to go look at whatever interested me. And dear god, the photos. I took so many pictures. 

(There’s an upcoming fun science/science and religion post that I’ll link to here whenever I write it.)

I had completely forgotten what it was like to be struck with curiosity like that, to have your mind generate a thousand questions a minute and to begin to think through hypothesis and tests and conclusions, to use what you know to rule out answers that didn’t make sense and to watch the entire puzzle come together in front of your eyes. I dominated our guide’s time on the second half of the trip, at Maropeng, because as the evolutionary timeline was laid out in front of me, I had question after question about what caused what and how we know what we know and what we’re going to do with that information. It was like a breath of fresh air to my mind and I was so glad to have this wonderful, knowledgeable, bright woman to answer all those questions, even if I had to get her to repeat a word or two because I misunderstood her accent. It has been far too long since the wheels in my head started turning like that. 

But if I abandoned my rules for reasonable international travel at Sterkfontein, my rules abandoned me later in the evening. We had a pizza dinner at the house of a former bishop, current pastor, with another pastor and another bishop in attendance. There were preachers and teachers all around and everyone was talking and making noise and leaving everything everywhere and focusing more on the person in front of them and their conversations than anything around them and I had no idea where I was, except that I was at a parsonage near a church somewhere in Johannesburg. I saw my first glimpse of a night sky that seemed upside down to me while the people behind me chatted and made friends and shared stories and food and photos. If it had been possible for me to be a little louder, a little less worried, a little less concerned about how to avoid attention and get where I wanted to be, maybe I would have heard more of those conversations, learned more, been fed by the people around me spiritually, emotionally, and physically. That pizza wasn’t half bad.

I don’t do small talk. I don’t do well in groups. Give me a someone to sit down with who is happy to talk about more than the weather and my career path and we will find something to dig into. That’s where life is for me in a social interaction. And to ask me to meet a bunch of strangers while still jetlagged at the end of a long day, a day where my brain had felt so vibrant earlier, well, that’s a recipe for minor panic, and irritation, and a frustrated feeling that the vibrancy I had has all been sucked into not panicking in front of strangers and maintaining a semi-pleasant face.

One day, I’ll write a thoughtful post about Liliesleaf Farm, probably in comparison to the Apartheid Museum, and I’ll post it here. And maybe I’ll post about the lunch we had with people in Soweto, where I learned Zulu and ate a homemade meal with my hands and talked about all the political challenges our countries face and post it here. And maybe I’ll post about dinner and the restaurant cat and the varieties of religious conversations that pop up when you gather seminary students and bishops around a table and link to it here. But mostly, what I have been struck by in the past two days is what gives me life, and what drains it from me, and how fragile I can be. Send me out into the world, let me explore, let me think, let me wonder, give me a trusted soul to share with, and I’ll fly. Sit me down unmoored at a people with twenty new people and I will drown.

Well, at least until I learn the rules for how to swim.

Something New: South Africa Day 1

We stopped in Dakar around 2am to refuel. I stared out the plane window at the tiny crescent moon over Senegal, unable to do much else besides stare. We'd been on the plane for eight hours already and we weren't allowed to get off unless we were staying in Dakar. We spent about an hour in Senegal to switch out passengers and give the aisles a quick once-over with the vacuum. I was intensely jealous of the toddler a few rows back, fast asleep on her dad's lap. I too wanted to be asleep somewhere safe and comfortable. I wanted to be anywhere except where I was.

The sky started to lighten as we sat on the tarmac, Senegal being several time zones ahead of my body. The moon and stars faded as we began to taxi onto the runway. I watched it all go by, still envious of a two-year old, as my seat partner leaned over as I was looking out the window, pointed at the horizon, and exclaimed, "The first African sunrise!"

Now, it's the same Sun. It's the same Earth. It's the same atmosphere. I understand that changes in the air due to geographic location may change the quality of the sunrise or sunset from time to time, but really, a sunrise is a sunrise. You can take your romanticization of someone else's continent somewhere else. I ain't come on this trip for that.

See, and that's been a part of my worry for some time about this trip to South Africa. It's an immersion, a required part of seminary at Wesley, where you go to be immersed in the culture of a new place and to study how Christianity lives and breathes and moves in a different environment. You'll learn about a new place and you'll also learn about yourself. A new culture will resonate with you in ways you couldn't expect, but it'll reveal blindspots too. In order to let a new culture do this work, though, you have to be open, in a way. You have to be ready for the lessons. And it's hard to hear those lessons if all you're doing is blessing those rains down in Africa.

Could be that worry, which I've been directing at others, is ungenerous and unfounded. I've been worried a lot lately. No, I've been anxious. I've been anxious and depressed and it has been a long couple of months dealing with what's happening in my head and what's happening in my life. I wasn't ready for this trip. I'm not ready to learn. I've been running on all available cylinders for too long and I've been ready to quit more than once. I'm so, so done. I want to be safe and cared for and I want to rest.

But then, as we climbed higher into the sky, I looked out the window again and saw trees that I had only ever seen in books. I saw a landscape that was completely new to me, a whole new world that I, despite my myriad travels, had never experienced. It's the same Sun, the same Earth, the same atmosphere, but somehow, everything looked different. The first African sunrise of the trip spread out over my first real view of Africa and something wonderful happened in my heart. Something new bloomed.

And I was gloriously okay with where I was.

Two Christmas Sermons

This is our house's Christmas cactus. It was struggling mightily on our kitchen counter, so I adopted it and have been showing it all the affection I can, which is sparse and sporadic, but apparently sufficient. It's been quite the year, and both the cactus and I are glad we've gotten through Christmas. Below are the links to two sermons I preached on Sunday, which I hope will be good reason this season. The first is about Mary and is good for those who want to be future revolutionaries, and the second is about the struggles some of us go through during the Christmas season and is good for those who need a break this holiday season.

For Mary, read Unexpected Hope. 

For a break and maybe some cathartic tears, read A Longest Night Reflection.

A Longest Night Reflection

This the manuscript text of a reflection shared at a longest night service on December 23, 2018. 

After I sprained my ankle, it turned several satisfying shades of blue and purple, some of which has yet to completely fade weeks later. My ankle swelled up like a parade balloon and wouldn’t allow me to put weight on it no matter how much I wanted it to, forcing me to take the past few weeks much more slowly than I wanted to. People noticed the boot and or the crutches and the brace and they leapt to help me, carrying things for me, opening doors, holding doors open for about forty-five seconds longer than they thought they were going to need to as I hobbled my way forward. Friends and acquaintances alike would exclaim, “What have you done to your foot!” upon seeing me arrive with my patented step-sliiiide, step-sliiiide, step-sliiiide. In short, everyone could see that I was hurt and everyone was understanding; helpful, even.

I needed that visibility in order to heal, because deep down, I think that if you can’t see a problem, it’s not a real problem. Unless you’re gushing blood or a bone is sticking through, you need to get back up and play through the pain. Mind over matter. We’ll look at bandaging up whatever’s wrong when we’ve got some time to rest, when there’s not so much to do, but right now, unless it’s an emergency, we’re going to keep on keeping on.

I come from a line of football coaches, in case that wasn’t apparent.

But the truth is, it would have taken longer to heal if I didn’t acknowledge the injury and rest my ankle when I needed to, and if I didn’t accept the help that other people offered me. My black-and-blue foot probably saved me a couple of weeks of lingering pain on the other side of the healing process. If my sprain that hadn’t shown up so vibrantly, I would have ignored the pain and limped on for months.

Grief is like that for many of us, I think. If it’s not visible, it’s hard to heal from, and it’s only visible for such a short period of time. The time between the diagnosis and the funeral, or the time between the phone call and the wake, or the time between the papers being filed and the divorce being finalized, as long as they may seem in those moments, are finite periods of time. It’s not often that you find people who understand that those moments are the tip of the iceberg when it comes to grief. And just when you think that iceberg has melted, it surfaces again, brought up by the warm currents of the holidays or anniversaries or triggered memories. This on-going, invisible grief can be more difficult to deal with than the fresh grief we felt at the moment of loss.

Of course, there are also those kinds of hurts and loss that people never see, or don’t take seriously when they do see them. Struggles with fertility. Miscarriages. Abuse of every kind. Loss of friendships. Loss of relationships. Loss of homes or places of safety and comfort. Loss of jobs or careers or roles or dreams. All of these things cause real pain and real grief that is exacerbated by this time of year.

And we wish someone, anyone, would just understand, without us having to explain. Telling someone else that you’re grieving takes vulnerability and energy and we might not have that in us right now, but it would be so good for someone else to understand that we do want to hear our loved one’s names. We do want to tell stories and think of all the things they loved, or would have grown up to love. We want someone to understand that we need space sometimes and not come chasing us down, or someone to ask if they can join us at the Christmas tree as we sit looking at the lights, and just listen to a little bit of what’s going on. We wish someone would just get it.

But the world is not a wish-granting factory and so we do our best to get by. We share articles on facebook that explain why the holidays aren’t happy for everyone, hoping that they’ll open just one person’s eyes, and go back to our celebrations in whatever mood we can muster up that day. We say the responses that talk about joy we don’t feel. We pray the prayers that talk about hope that we don’t have. We sing the hymns that talk about love when we’re not experiencing. We do our best to smile and laugh around family and friends, to meet the expectations of the season. That’s just the way life has to be lived.

I know that’s the way I’ve lived my life. Most of the darkness in my life has been the invisible kind, the kind that I myself even have trouble taking seriously. Grief over the sudden and unexpected deaths of two of my friends, both of them educators who should have had long lives ahead of them, has hit me in waves over the past year, but it’s not my dinner table that will have an empty seat, it’s the one in their families’ homes. The same with Jean, Lib, and Jearline, matriarchs of my life back home. The empty spaces where they should be in church and around the neighborhood are real, but I was not the one who had to greet everyone who came to their funerals. I mourned right along with four of my friends as they lost their children before they were born, but it’s not my arms that ache to hold a baby lost to miscarriage. I have walked with my friend as she and her husband divorced and she begins to heal, but it’s not my heart that was broken over unmet promises of faithfulness and forgiveness. It’s been death by a thousand cuts this past year, but none of them was big enough to break the surface.

And then there’s the pain that’s only my own. Seminary is a time of tearing apart so that you can rebuild and if you’re doing the work right, you’re not only tearing down your false idols of what you understood God to be, you’re also tearing down some of the mistaken ideas you have about yourself. I had thought I was indominable, inimitable, and inexhaustible, but I’ve spent the past year being knocked down upheaval in my personal life, by past abuse becoming a present emotional reality, by changes in relationships, and by depression and anxiety that has been exacerbated by all these challenges, all of which have caused me to fail to uphold my responsibilities in school and in work. I’ve felt like a complete failure, completely alone, completely hopeless. There have been times that I haven’t wanted to go on, times that I’ve wanted to be done living my life, and yet, even with all that scary, serious loss staring me in the face, it’s hard for me to take it seriously. I found myself in my therapist’s office listening to her explain an activity that would, in the end, be the thing that would help me pull my mind back from the edge it was teetering on, saying, “Oh, but that’s for people with real problems.”

Sometimes our pain is invisible, even to ourselves.

But the wonderful, glorious thing about the Christian faith is that our pain is not invisible to God, even when it is to us or to those around us. We are seen and known and loved by the God who made everything, from gluons to galaxies, from quarks to quasars, from starlings to stars. When we hurt, we never hurt alone. God shouts this truth from every inch of creation, but sometimes our pain and grief, the world’s pain and grief, is louder than that, and so God chose to whisper it, to come to earth as a tiny baby in a far-off land a long time ago. Christmas is the time when we remind ourselves of the lengths God will go to in order to be with us, especially in our pain. We are not alone. Our pain is not invisible or unimportant to God. No matter what it is we’ve loss, it mattered. That’s why it hurts, and will continue to hurt.

And that is why God will continue to be with us, in this season and throughout our lives. Because God knows our hurt and God knows that there’s no simple solution to our pain, so God chose to join us in it. Now, I know that this is a high-flying theological claim and that for many of us, in our pain, we could not care less what God is “doing.” But whenever we’re ready to see it, I promise you that we’ll be able to see the presence of God around us, even in this season.

It’ll be there in the hug that brings unexpected comfort.

It’ll be there in the picture that brings a smile where before there had only been sadness.

It’ll be there in the loud, boisterous moment where for a second, just a second, everything seems whole again.

It’ll be there in the stories we tell about those that we’ve lost. God is always there in our remembering.

All those moments of kindness and goodness were planted into creation and they were given new life right alongside the baby who was laid in the manger. We only need to welcome them, the way we will welcome Jesus on Christmas.

Now, none of this is easy. I know that firsthand. But we’ve already made a first step. We’re here, in this place, with these people, who have all come because their pain, visible and invisible, was too much for this holiday season. We’re not alone. And best of all, God is with us. My prayer for you and for me, in the days ahead, is that we would see our pain and acknowledge it, no matter what it is. Pain is pain and grief is grief and it all deserves our attention and care. You can’t just treat the wounds that bruise. And once we’ve done that, I pray that we would be wrapped up in the kindness and goodness hidden in this world that has been so unkind and cruel to us, and held close in the presence of the God whose coming this season celebrates. Amen? Amen.