water

Well friends, it’s been a while… and I’m not going to go through a play-by-play of what’s happened the last 3 or so months since I’ve blogged, but suffice it to say that it has been a good semester. I’ve done a lot, seen a lot, experienced a lot and probably grown a lot more than I can yet realize… I’ve learned a lot about myself and about ‘having a real job’… as it’s the first time in my life I’ve not been a student since I was about 3 years old! Unfortunately, the semester only has about 3.5 weeks left, then a 3-week Christmas break before new students arrive in January.

Being in Uganda this time around has been eye-opening as I’ve been able to learn a lot more about the culture and deepen friendships with people that I had just started to know when I left last time. I’m so blessed for the opportunity to be here now and I’m already not looking forward to it ending!

So, I recently watched a documentary with some friends entitled Rivers and Tides, about a landscape sculptor. The work he does with nature is spectacular and breathtaking, and really just cool … anyway, he does temporary pieces and then part of the art is seeing the work he’s done be overcome and even destroyed by nature… seeing the way tides caused some of his pieces to be completely covered in water reminded me of a poem I had read last semester. The poem was written by an American missionary in Chile named Carol Bialock and quoted in Sharing the Darkness by Sheila Cassidy. It doesn’t have a title but here’s Carol’s poem followed by Sheila’s commentary:

I built my house by the sea.
Not on the sands, mind you,
not on the shifting sand.
And I built it of rock.
A strong house
by a strong sea.
And we got well acquainted, the sea and I.
Good neighbors.
Not that we spoke much.
We met in silences,
respectful, keeping our distance
but looking our thoughts across the fence of sand.
Always the fence of sand our barrier,
always the sand between.
And then one day
(and I still don’t know how it happened)
The sea came.
Without warning.
Without welcome even.
Not sudden and swift, but a shifting across the sand like wine.
Less like the flow of water than the flow of blood.
Slow, but flowing like an open wound.
And I thought of flight, and I thought of drowning, and I thought of death.
But while I thought the sea crept higher till it reached my door.
And I knew that there was neither flight nor death nor drowning.
That when the sea comes calling you stop being good neighbors,
well acquainted, friendly from a distance neighbors.
And you give your house for a coral castle
and you learn to breathe under water.

“Now the curious thing is that all the time I was in Chile I understood the sea in this poem as an image of the presence of God—the way he takes over our lives. When I showed it to a monk friend, however, he saw the slow advance of the sea as the gradual encroachment of the agony of the world upon one’s consciousness. It is only now, ten years on, that I begin to understand what he meant when he said that the great mystery is that the two are really the same.”

Well, that concludes my most recent thoughts on life, I’ll let you take from it what you may…

Until next time, be blessed!!

Ruth