4.17.2008
Much has happened since I last posted, or even since Amy posted for that matter. My neglect is due to the increasingly hectic nature of our lives and our quickly diminishing stores of energy, two phenomena which I’m pretty sure are inversely proportional. Since February, I have visited a village and spoken in English to over a hundred Ghanaians I had never met before about the benefits of education (I had to be translated from English to Twi to Ga, two local languages, before I could be understood); I learned how difficult it is to convey in simple language the importance of learning to people who don’t have a school and who don’t speak the same language or share my culture. More importantly, though, Amy’s parents have come and sadly gone. It was a wonderful respite to have them here in Ghana, but as we knew that it would only be a temporary stay it was still a bittersweet time. During their visit, however, we didn’t sit around and complain that they we wouldn’t be around forever. The Maugans’ took us to Tanzania where we marveled at the vast plains of the Serengeti, the cloud-covered African peaks of Mt. Kilimanjaro and Mt. Meru, and lions hunting warthogs in the hollowed-out ancient volcanic caldera that is Ngorongoro Crater. Besides these excursions I have chaperoned and “directed” our students in a 3-day Model UN event in which our school took part; Amy has continued to alternate between sweating outside everyday for P.E. and then rushing back inside for Bible classes; and lastly we have both gotten food poisoning several times. I’ve also written two aborted blogs which were essentially attempts to explain my own weariness and lassitude.
Well, I hope that the first paragraph has given an adequate picture of our lives lately. This doesn’t really even include the amount of preparation we do for our classes and the struggles which persistently attend our relationships with students and other teachers. And while I wish I could attach the same bildungsroman format to this blog and show how I have grown in the last 2-3 months, I can’t quite muster up the mental energy to create this sense of purpose and linearity. In fact, Amy and I have been frequently struggling to make sense of all the chaos at the school: students who seem to bicker constantly (it is high school, of course; their proximity to us is just closer than normal due to the relatively small number of them) and who appear to resist any form of moral development, let alone learning. We’ve also dealt with the inevitable development of multiple teachers and staff coming and going. To add the cherry to Amy’s (I rarely eat it) bowl of foreign ice cream which never quite tastes the same as it does in the States, living in Ghana the Third World Country leaves all of our interactions with bureaucracy—our constantly derelict electricity and the nearly unpayable bills which follow (because we have to work so hard separate truth from falsity to find out how much we owe)—stained with the bitter taste of corruption.
But despite all the confusion at school and the unreliability in this country, I have days when I am able to write this in my journal: “Today was a particularly good day at AIS. These are the kinds of days that make me project wistfulness into the future. I can already envision the Ghanaian sun’s warmth exerting mental warmth over the memory of this day.” This was the second day back after spring break, and as I glanced over the ethnic as well as personality diversity of our student body and the relative peaceful coexistence of our students and teachers, I knew that the gloom which had presided over the last few months was not the conquering theme. Although clouds of unknowing and darkness at times seem to overshadow the light of God’s love, we do have Christ to dispel the darkness by bodying forth his illuminating, redeeming love.
And although that fact stands prominently fixed in my mind and heart even if I don’t always apply it, this is not the idea that is ringing in my brain presently. My “non-epiphany” runs like this: while God has fixed his immutable though ineffable standards to this world, in practical experience life does not offer us the same moral fixity and logical consistency we so crave. This complexity does not just consist of the familiar “people doing the right things for the wrong reasons or the wrong things for the right reasons.” That commonplace statement is a part of life’s complexity, but more acutely mental/spiritual vacillations cause me to marvel at God’s majestic creation in one breath and to feel absolutely meaningless the next. Over spring vacation these two sentiments were elicited by the exact same observation: the now indelible mental tableau of a sinewy female lion pausing from the hunt and staring directly into my eyes for thirty seconds while the breathtaking walls of the Ngorongoro caldera towered above and enclosed me within this sanctuary of primordial nature. This sight—this lion that stirred a premonition of death and self-negation—inspired within me both exultation and fear and also amazement and existential doubt. Blake’s image of “The Tyger” is perhaps the best representation of this dual response to elemental, beautiful savagery because it shows how we as humans are both compelled by and driven from reminders of our mortality, even shapely, fascinating ones like wild lions. It forces us to ask the question, “What immortal hand or eye could frame thy fearful symmetry?”, since it begs us to answer what kind of Being could create a beast that is both capable of intense, unconscionable malice and also one that displays such wondrous, immaculately proportioned beauty. Only a God whose mind is unknown to us could display evidence of his ordered handiwork while still leaving us conscious that our lives are a vapor, a chasing after the wind.
So this is the normal process of my mind: I constantly waver between wonderment and adoration of creation on the one hand and confusion at its incomprehensibility on the other. What is the purpose of all this suffering in Ghana (domestic abuse and AIDS, kids routinely beaten, dead men left on the roads, Good Samaritans in rare supply because no one can afford to get involved, belief that witchcraft rather than Christ can solve problems, etc.)? But I also wonder why should I be the beneficiary of such a marvelous, awe-inspiring world? In short, I have now accepted what my literary and philosophical training previously taught me. Life is so infinitely complex that the human mind, with all of its own fluctuation and irresolution, cannot even begin to penetrate the interconnectedness of all of life’s various, conflicting inconsistency and also its unexplainable beauty and goodness. But then again I don’t need a rational explanation for the connections amongst life’s incongruities; I just need the mental certainty that Christ, who has woven together the tapestry of this temporal, fleeting world, has redeemed me from inconsistency, evil and confusion. Then I, with all the odiousness endemic to my nature, can be comforted by the awareness of His omniscience while relying on his grace. And with that, I’ll end the blogpost with one of my favorite prayers from the Anglican Book of Common Prayer, one I meditate on frequently when beset by this ailment of double-(or triple or quadruple) mindedness:
Almighty and most merciful Father, We have erred and strayed from thy ways like lost sheep, We have followed too much the devices and desires of our own hearts, We have offended against thy holy laws, We have left undone things which we ought to have done, And we have done those things which we ought not to have though, And there is no health in us: But thou, O Lord, have mercy upon us miserable offenders; Spare thou them, O God, which confess their faults, Restore thou them that are penitent, According to thy promises declared unto mankind in Christ Jesus our Lord: And grant, O most merciful Father, for his sake, That we may hereafter live a godly, righteous, and sober life, To the glory of thy holy Name. Amen.
Postscript: Although this lion metaphor repeatedly surfaces in a similar form in The Chronicles of Narnia in the character of Aslan, I’m almost positive Lewis never personally saw a lion in the Serengeti or the Ngorongoro Crater, so I win. Take that, Clive Staples! I may not be a better writer or more profound thinker, but at least I win this round.
Oh, and look on Amy's Facebook profile for pictures because for some frustrating reason this blogsite wouldn't let me put any up.










