Parting Words

A few days ago I boarded a plane, as I have countless times these three years in Africa; the same old suitcase in tow (though wearing a few more dents and bruises than it once did); the same old passport and immigration rigmarole; the same old stifling musk of too many anxious passengers crammed into a Zambian departure lounge. Same old, yet different; same old, yet somehow new. Because for the first time in three long years my ticket was one-way. Yep. I tore off the tarmac of the runway, bound for South Africa and eventually, a week later, home.

Three years at its end. I knew it was coming, but that makes it no easier. I knew the time I had left to finish things up, but it's never time enough. The end drew near faster than it should have. It always does.

That is how my last morning prayer meeting at Kachele Farm, that haven of love and peace I've come to call home these three years, found me before I had half realised it was coming. The night before, I had knelt there in my room praying over what I would say, a parting word of encouragement or challenge or blessing worthy of this dear family of mine. Yet kneeling there, scanning my heart, I found myself unable to say anything at all, even to God.

                                                                                                                                         

- In the silence of the heart, God speaks -

Mother Teresa

Silent, speechless, undone, but for one thing. Bubbling up and out of me like water spluttering over the sides of a pan, I found myself saying...

Thank You. Thank You.

It was all I could say. Thank You, Dad. Thank You, Jesus. Thank You, Spirit, for ever being with me.

No other words seemed right. No other words could have been any harder.

So when the following morning did appear, I fumbled in my mind over the words to say and settled on a few. But when I was called upon to bring my parting word, a deeper and truer part of me interrupted my practiced composure and all I found myself saying, through tears and chokes, was

Thank You.

That is my parting word.

For all that is gone before,

for every face etched on my heart,

for every tear that testified to the indwelling heart of God,

for every moment this family bore me up over ragged rocks too hard for me,

and for every moment they threw me from my snug boat out into open water,

for the company,

for the unexpected shafts of the miraculous brightening a dull way,

and for the every-day much comforting ordinariness too,

for Tawonga, the funniest and free-est three year old I've ever known,

for every mistake, mishap, misfortune and moment of mayhem (and there were a few),

for every child and Gogo I had eyes to notice and ears to listen to, and for all the ones I missed,

for being interrupted by love,

for finding what I didn't expect to find, one with whom I can share all my days,

but above all for grace,

that mad grace that led me here and ever bears me on,

Thank You.

The Missionary

One day during my time at University, by a rare turn of opportunity and not a little persuasive charm on my side, I managed to gain access to the archives of Canterbury Cathedral. It was the fascination of every theology student, this mysterious catalogue of ancient books locked behind Access Only glass doors in the crypts of the cathedral. Masquerading as a research assistant for a PhD student, I passed an afternoon in there with no company but my friend, a few thousand books and a wheelie ladder. Amidst leather-lined volumes that have passed more winters than some of the world's nations (one dated 1604!), I came upon something fascinating.

Diaries. The diaries of Britain's first missionaries, handwritten as they had walked the plains and wilds of Africa. History in my hands. At this point I had no idea, could not have imagined, that I would one day walk those wilds myself. Still I picked one up, flicked through the taut, discoloured pages. It was penned in the archaic elegance of all old handwriting, with that characteristic tilt and flourish. I imagined the author, sitting against a tree, his diary perched in his knees as the setting sun throws a dark orange hue across its pages. He looks about him. The haze of dust and smoke drifting across the horizon reminds him of the city smog of home. But he is a world away. He wants to make note of everything: the wildlife, the smell of the soil; he wants to scratch all he can into that journal and take a palmful of Africa home with him. He wants his friends and his family to catch what he longs to share with them, wants his world to meet with a world it hasn't known. It is all he can bring.

And so he writes what he can. He writes of how the ears of African elephants are shaped like Africa, of how smoke breaking through the thatched roofs of mud huts makes them look like giant cooking pots, of how shadows cast by the setting sun span the ground like a zebra's stripes, and of how all of it plays its part to make a vast, complex and boundless symphony One.

But that is the unimportant stuff.

He writes of the people, for a land is nothing without its people. They are difficult to know, like Africa itself, impossible to hedge or characterise. Just when you think you have plumbed the depths of their culture and character you find you have only run a spoon along the surface. He calls them savage, not with that kind of carnivorous and primitive savagery, but savage as synonym for passion. They bear their heart and emotions boldly and loudly and do not wrap them in a cloak of sophistication. So when they grieve it is loud and bitter, when they celebrate it is fierce, when they laugh it is as if it bubbles up from the very depths of heart and soul.

He writes of their resilience, it is his favourite thing about them. Many live a hard life, inexpressibly hard, yet no matter what depth of pain or poverty they are steeped in their capacity for faith and hope seems incorruptible. They continue on, through the seasons, undefeated.

Our missionary wants his world to encounter and be transformed by this, by the heart of a land and its people. He wants to tell of it, he must, but trying to define Africa, even that tiny patch of it he has come to know so well, beggars language. And at the end of his journal, though not an inch of its pages remains unmarked, he knows he has written nothing. Nothing he could put to words would truly tell of the fierce, beautiful, warm, unpredictable, chaotic, ancient and endless place they call Africa.

For the Dark Continent is not so dark after all, he writes, but vibrant with colours that cannot be imagined or described. You have to see them for yourself.

This is our missionary's final word. Laying against his tree, the sun set but for a last vestige of dying red on the horizon, he closes his journal in his lap. He hopes only that his words will do enough to inspire those who read them to come and see for themselves, even a boy two hundred years his younger passing a summer's afternoon amidst dusty forgotten archives.

Advice for an Aspiring Missionary

On top of my wardrobe is a red leather suitcase; it was my granddad's. It is now beyond use - the leather worn, the zip stuck and the handle all squeaky. But it was with this suitcase in my hand and an utterly ridiculous fedora on my head that I arrived in Africa two and a half years ago, looking every bit the part. Today, two and a half years older (and if the loss of the fedora is anything to go by, two and a half years wiser), I wonder: what would I say to that younger Adam? Were I to travel back and accost that bright-eyed fedora'ed explorer, what would I say? If I could take the seat beside him on that Boeing 707 at Heathrow, Terminal 5, as he waits apprehensively for the plane to jolt into life, what advice might I give him in the few short hours before he steps out onto the tarmac and into this new adventure?

With a little thought I've settled upon these few snippets of advice, most of them learnt on the other side of an embarrassing mistake, all of them the fruit of an experience which never fails to remind me how much I have yet to learn.

#1. Lone wolfs are for cowboy movies. Depend on people. Be immodestly vulnerable, and you'll give others permission to be the same.

#2. Be a part of creating real, authentic community. There are no easy steps for it, but a good start is to always be the last person to leave the dinner table.

#3. Dwell deeply in the Word of God. The Bible comes alive in an amazing way when you read it amidst the poor and powerless.

#4. Culture shock is real, and it hurts. A dose of chocolate, coffee, British films and a decent book makes for a good pain-killer, but the only real remedy when it comes is talking to people. See item 1.

#5. Know that when things are hardest God does his best work, both in and through you. Challenge creates dependency, dependency fosters faith, and God knows that.

#6. Keep your head up, literally. You never know what you'll miss if you walk with your eyes to the ground.

#7. Never make 'spending time with God' an excuse for not spending time with people.

#8. You will think you are 100% unequivocally unalterably undeniably sold out for the vision. But that will be tested by disappointment and frustration. When your enthusiasm wavers, stand firm; on the other side is something immeasurably more enduring and worthwhile - Commitment.

#9. In time you will realise just how unqualified, inexperienced and ill-fitted you are for this job. In those moments remember that you did not choose to do this work for God, God chose to do this work through you.

#10. Don't be a hero. Drink bottled water, take your malaria pills and if you see a snake, don't stamp it to death with your boot. That's ill-advised.

#11. Eventually the people and the potholes will get you down. Don't feel guilty about it, but don't let cynicism take root in your heart. Once it does, it's very hard to pull out.

#12. You might as well just get used to the staring.

#13. And finally:

Listen before you speak.

Learn before you teach.

Love, long before you try to lead.

And so here I am, back in the cold dawn of September 6th 2011, stepping onto a Boeing 707 at Heathrow airport, Terminal 5. In amidst the crowd of passengers I spot an animated young mzungu waiting for the plane to take off, his grandfather's suitcase stowed above him and an utterly unbefitting fedora perched on his head. I look down at my list. I take it, tear it up slowly and pocket the pieces.

Because of course, had I the chance, I wouldn't tell him a single one of these things. I wouldn't afford him a bypass for all those embarrassments, cultural faux pas's, mishaps, mistakes and misfortunes that would litter his way. No. If I were to say anything at all, it would probably be:

You will make mistakes. You'll eat an entire family's dinner because you don't want to offend anyone by not finishing your food. You'll run over a dog thinking that those people are waving at you, not telling you to watch where you're driving. You'll accidentally curse at someone in a bid to show off your mastery of the local language. You will make mistakes and that without doubt. You can, if you choose, learn from them.

For whatever became of that bright-eyed explorer, whatever he went on to discover about God, about the world, about himself, cannot be weighed against the immeasurable value of the discovery itself. The lesson learnt by owning your mistakes sticks deeper and longer than any learnt by listening to the mistakes of others.

That is what I would tell him. Or perhaps, had I the chance, I would simply walk past him to another seat, watch as he cocks his fedora slightly to the side for effect, and allow him to find out in his own time and way what a mistake that thing really is.