Africa Journal #2

Africa Journal #2

It feels good to get fingers to the keys. I don’t really have anyone to process with here and I am an external processor (for the most part). So writing is a release for me, especially on a day like today where my head and heart have been racing, going from one thought to the next. That’s not to say it has been negative, just busy internally. The reality is that the way I think and feel did not change when I stepped into the muggy air at Entebbe Airport. No, the same processes, emotions, fears, and hopes followed me here. They do not disappear and I am not sure if they should. I should be done hating myself for the various things I feel and struggle with, such self-loathing has obviously not produced life. So while I am here, again for the first time (haha), I would just love to be able to integrate both my past experience and the experiences of the right here, right now. I want to have, as Henri Nouwen would say, a “ministry of presence”. But who am I kidding? What do I bring to Africa past a broken heart and a desire to make a difference on this earth? Maybe that is where one starts. I do not know.

I do know that my time here has already been a crash course in Uganda 101. I’ve about died in a car accident, ridden on a boda boda who took me to the wrong place, eaten matoke a dozen times, carried 30 kilos of paint on my shoulder, called other white folks “muzungus”, killed a million bugs, made a fool out of myself playing football (soccer for all you US-only folks), stumbled through Luganda (it’s coming back!), walked through a marijuana garden in a slum, eaten jackfruit, laughed with the infectious smiles of children here, and, as is fitting for a short-term mission trip (which is what I’m ostensibly on), did a work project in a village. And of course, that is only the beginning. Tomorrow I go to church, and you’ve never experienced church to the fullest extent if you’ve never been to an African church. I’ll likely be asked to preach… and I’m not joking. Such is the danger of being considered “a missionary”, haha! But it would be an honor if they did ask me to preach, although I would kindly turn them down.

Africa is an amazing place. It is simply “other” compared to the West (as in Western/liberal civilization). It defies explanation for so many reasons and can’t quite be explained. Granted, a Ugandan moving to America would doubtless say the same thing. This is all just to say that the two societies are remarkably different. Now, you all know me and know that to me, for better or for worse, I’m always taking the macroview of experience. I’ll be asking existential, theological, or sociological questions amidst a very human experience. This is not a good thing, but it is a part of being Dan. Granted, considering the categorical imperative isn’t helpful to loving your neighbor. Neither is weighing the relative merits of pre-modernism, modernism, and postmodernism as it pertains to the Gospel and the efficacy therein those systems. But I do that. I cannot shut off my brain, and I didn’t learn to think like that in college. I learned to deconstruct in the Church. Likely that is due to the church’s capitulation to the American experience, but that conversation is for another time. I say all this to say that my hope and prayer is to, again, be present when Ibra is holding my hand or when Shafik is asking me about my life. I want to be present when I am back in the Kivulu slum amidst the refuse of human life and the incredible injustice one confronts upon walking across that bridge over a stream of filth into that slum. I want to be there, not in my head, not trying to deal with life in my head as I am often wont to do. Please pray I do not run in my head or my heart from the very real reality in front of me. There should be no words to describe a world so impoverished and unjust that children eat scraps out filthy, defecation-filled gutters—and I have no words. We in the West are inundated with photos of abject poverty around the world and all it has really done is make us unable to see. We are overwhelmed with the scope of the issue. We likely care, but feel powerless to move Heaven and earth to change how things are, for surely you and I did not singularly make things this way. For the believer, however, we have to find a way to make the gospel very, very real to the kids I attempted to play with yesterday. I do not have the answer to such a statement. My being here does not make me more holy than you, for I’ve done nothing here that I’ve not received more in return. Abby & David (and the others at A Perfect Injustice) show us all how it is done—how the Gospel of Christ is made real—by their presence amongst those who have nothing.

In Matthew 5, Jesus lays out, in what would eventually be called “the Beatitudes”/Sermon on the Mount, what the kingdom of God is represented by. They were not ethics, or demands, but descriptions of Christian community and presence. These verses are not about Jesus; they are Jesus. This is not a goal to reach, but a description of what it looks like to believe that Christ has ushered in a new age and we are just here to show the world that truth. Bonheoffer too focused on understanding the Sermon on the Mount in this way so that we would always focus on Christ. Bonheoffer’s “Discipleship” was written to those who were to be pastors in the confessing church—those who were more likely to die in Buchenwald then preach a sermon. This is the context of discovering the centrality of Christ in doing His Mission. This is the context by which lives are brought to the Savior. This is the context of my brothers and sisters ministering to the least of these. While they are unlikely to be killed, they are likely to face the full assault of Satan in other ways. But it is here, not necessarily this place, but in this heart position, this relentless mission that we see blessing of being poor in spirit, the blessing of mourning, the blessing of giving mercy. This, after all, is just some of the faithful learning to represent what God has already done. Now I just have to learn this for myself. Seeing such a visceral battlefield for the hearts of men and the soul of the Church played out in a Kampala slum is somewhat overwhelming….

Next week I will be starting a Mending the Soul group for the men here at A Perfect Injustice. You can expect the character or my writing to shift as I again lean on Psalm 77 for understanding my own life and the lives of those around me. This very well may be the calm before the storm.

Thank you for reading. God Bless you all.

Dan