I came across this while flipping through one of my old journals. Its a conversation i had with God.
This blog was written in October, shortly after i got home from Rwanda. Emmanuel let out a sigh as we pulled up to the church. A rudely built, but beautiful old building, used for many years as a place of worship was now a memorial. Purple is the color of mourning in Rwanda and i saw purple everywhere, along with bullet holes.
As i walked up to the church, there was a pungent smell, a dirty smell. Its hard to describe. Before i even got to the door, i thought "Je ne veut pas etre ici." and the feeling intensified as we toured the church.
Fifteen years ago, a genocide occurred in Rwanda. The events leading up to it are complicated and the history is long, but in April of 1994, neighbors started killing neighbors because of what tribe they belonged to. The killings lasted for 100 days, and the death toll was around one million people. Thousands of people came to this particular church for refuge. Roughly 4,500 people packed into the church thinking that they would be safe when the killing started.
Our guide, who was eleven years old when the genoicide hit, explained to us that the holes in the cement floor just under the door way were from the grenade that the attackers threw to blow open the door.He also told us that he survived by burying himself in the midst of dead bodies, blood and limbs and playing dead. He struggled to breathe because of other people's blood that pooled near his head and when, after two days he got up, he had to peel his face from the dried blood on the floor.
The piles of clothes everywhere were the clothes of the victims who weren't so lucky. The alter of the church was blood stained, and there were 'tools' of killing laying on it.
Once again it thought "je ne veut pas etre ici." We walked down into a little memorial. There were skulls laid out in rows, one even had the person's name written on it.
Behind the church, there was a crypt. A mass grave, if you will, of the 4,500 people who died in the there. There were a few steps to go down into it, and i could see caskets at the bottom of the stairs. My dad asked me if i wanted to go down there. I told him no, i didnt, and then went down the stairs.
There were metal shelves about 8 feet high. On the shelves were bones, piles of bones, and skulls. Or what was left of them. Some of the skulls were just fragments, i shudder to think how they got that way.
Just fifteen years ago, these were real people. Who laughed and sang and danced. I couldnt shake the feeling that there was evil in the crypt, these people died because of evil. As one Rwandan put it, during the genocide satan was loose in Rwanda.
The Rwandans have a proverb that says something to the effect that God goes all over the world during the day, but he sleeps in Rwanda. They also say that he slept somewhere else during the genocide.
After the genocide, Rwanda was reborn. In the wake of such terrible things, Rwanda has responded well. I was reminded of this, as i came out of the crypt, and i heard the sound of children's voices.
They had just gotten out of school for the day.
I woke up to the sound of thunder and the dramatic flash of lightening. Marching over the hills of Rwanda were thunderheads just waiting to unleash their anger on the city of Kigali. Being from Oregon, i'd never really experienced a thunderstorm of this magnitude, we dont really get thunderstorms here. I was actually legitimately afraid.
If there's one thing that sticks out in my mind about growing up in the Emerson household, its tea parties with daddy. Believe it or not, thats the thing i remember most my relationship with my dad prior to my teenage years.
It was pretty simple for him. He'd say something like "Lets have a tea party!" and we would go scurrying off to get it all ready. My sister Jami and i would get dressed up in our best Daisy Kingdom dresses, and then run to my sister Traci's room and ask/beg to borrow her miniature tea set for such an auspicious occasion as this. I remember the tea set well, it was mostly white, with lavender accents and lavender and white checked mini napkins... I always was jealous of it, i think Traci still has it. Anyway... We'd then run and ask mom if she had something to eat for our tea party, and we usually came away with some stale graham crackers or something like that. To be honest, im not sure i know what a not stale graham cracker tastes like...
All that dad really had to do was show up and smile and talk to us and tell us we were precious. Bingo, AWESOME dad in one easy step!
My dad and i laugh about this now, but truthfully, it did a lot for my relationship with my father. He cultivated in me a trust for him and an absolute security in fact that he loved(s) me. Having a tea party suuuch a girly thing to do, but my dad loved us, and so he came to our silly tea party with undersized tea cups and stale graham crackers, and loved us by speaking to our little girl hearts where we were at... Im thankful for my father, and for my mother too... I am who i am as a woman because of my dad's love and my mom's example... Well, and a plethora of other reasons too...
Tonight, after spending a good part of the last few days reading theology and thinking about the Christian faith in a very logical manner, im ready for something a little less cut and dry, a little less controversial... I decided to have a tea party with my Holy Daddy. While logic, theology and critical thinking skills are important, there's something to be said for an emotional connection with my Daddy, Jesus... I can theorize and think and live in a world of abstract possibilities, and miss the relationship. Tea parties with Jesus are important, at least for me. Jesus still looks at me over a cup a tea and some homemade shortbread cookies and smiles at me and tells me im precious while i tell him about all of my theories and hypothesis... or even just dump all of my silly girlish feelings on him... in spite of it all, i am confident in his love, and his steady and soothing voice compelling my wayward and sinful self towards his holiness...
I may not dress my best for Jesus, or bust out the stale graham crackers, but i connect with him over tea in a way that can never be rationalized.
Thanks goes to my earthly daddy, who, while still a fallen human, gave me a small picture of what a heavenly father looks like.
My mom, for stale graham crackers, and her nurturing of little hearts
Traci, for her tea set.
And Jami for being my tag-along. :)
And Jesus for having tea with me tonight, as i try and figure out what the heck predestination is all about.
"I thought it was 'if a body catch a body,'" I said Anyway, i keep picturing all these little kids, playing some game in a big field of rye and all. Thousands of little kids, and nobody's around - nobody big, i mean - except me. And im standing on the edge of some crazy cliff. What i have to do, i have to catch everybody if they start to go over the cliff - i mean they're running and they don't look where they're going I have come come out from somewhere and catch them. Thats all i'd do all day. I'd just be the Catcher in the rye and all...." J. D. Salinger Catcher in the Rye
The beach is not the place to work; to read, write or think. I should have remembered that from other years. Too warm, too damp, too soft for any real mental discipline or sharp flights of spirit. One never learns. Hopefully, one carries down the faded straw bag, lumpy with books, clean paper, long over-due, unanswered letters, freshly sharpened pencils, lists and good intentions.
The books remain unread, the pencils break their points and the pads rest smoothly and unblemished as the cloudless sky. No reading, no writing, no thoughts even - at least, not at first.
At first, the tired body takes over completely. As on shipboard, one descends into a deck-chair apathy. One is forced against one's mind, against all tidy resolutions, back in into the primeval rhythms of the seashore. Rollers on the beach, wind in the pines, the slow flapping of herons across the sand dunes, drown out the hectic rhythms of city and suburb, time tables and schedules. One falls under their spell, relaxes, stretches out prone. One becomes, in fact, like the element on which one lies, flattened by the sea; bare, open, empty as the beach, erased by today's tides of all yesterdays scribblings.
And then, some morning, in the second week, the mind wakes, comes to life again. Not in a city sense - no - but beach-wise. It begins to drift, to play, to turn over gentle careless rolls like those lazy waves on the beach. One never knows what chance treasures these easy unconscious rollers may toss up, on the smooth white sand of the conscious mind; what perfectly rounded stone, what rare shell from the ocean floor. Perhaps a channelled whelk, a moon shell or even an argonaut. But it must not be sought for or - heaven forbid - dug for. No, no dredging of the sea bottom here. That would defeat one's purpose. The sea does not reward those who are too anxious, too greedy, or too impatient. To dig for treasures shows not only impatience and greed, but lack of faith. Patience, patience, patience, is what the sea teaches. Patience and faith. One should like empty, open, choiceless as a beach - waiting for a gift from the sea.
--Gift from the sea, by Anne Morrow Lindbergh.
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