Sunday, January 20, 2013

Returning Home a Fertile Challenge

Some wise person said that any important experience can be enhanced by how it is "bookened"--the preparation and intention entering into it, and the care and intention with which it is ended.  That certainly applies to mission trips!  Here is my reflection on returning home.



On Returning from a Mission Trip
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                        The Seed Cracked Open

It used to be
That when I would wake in the morning,
I could with confidence say,
“What am ‘I’ going to
Do?’

That was before the seed
Cracked open.

Now Hafiz is certain:

There are two of us housed
In this body,

Doing the shopping together in the market and
Tickling each other
While fixing the evening’s food.

Now when I awake
All the internal instruments play the same music:

“God, what love-mischief can ‘We’ do
For the world
Today?”
Hafiz c.1320-1389

Sunday morning, 10:30 AM-
 
I wake in my own bed—where am I?
A hundred thoughts line up in my head,
Patiently waiting their turn here
In the twilight of my consciousness.

I want to hold on to the sights and the smells,
Laughter and pain and memories—
Let the ordinary and familiar
Hold back for a day—
I am not here yet.

What have I learned?
The facts from my new experience jostle
Around in my head,
New questions bubble to the surface,
I note a dozen things I want to ask and learn.

I want to tell my familiar world of
The new world I have discovered:
Will they care?  Will they understand?
Is that possible,
Not having been there?

What I most want is
To hold on to some of the change that has
Cracked open within me,
So hard-won, this newness—
What will sustain it?

I know in the end I must settle for
Pieces of my desires,
Let the familiar will nibble away
At the newness.

No matter—I will hold on to
What I can,
Make what mischief I can
Here and now, and
Ponder these things in my heart.

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