and Back Again

I remember sharply,
but not in detail,

telling you that I was concerned about my in/ability to interact with and care about people on a personal level.

And you laughed,
reminding me that I'd just gone all the way to Cairo for the purpose of volunteering in a school for refugees.

But I was serious.

And I didn't know how else to explain it - It was a feeling - I was describing a feeling that had acquired words only recently - so I had nothing else to say.

So I told myself that it was an amusing, though very troubling, irony.
And I let you laugh.



I have been finding words, slowly. A Taylor expansion of the idea, if you will.

I think it's easier to go all the way to Cairo.

And even while I was there, the thing that concerned me most was not the traffic or the language barrier, but whether I'd be able to deliberately move into meaningful interactions with the people in my group and the people at my school in such a short time, knowing that we would only be there for a matter of weeks.

(It's possible that this is only true in retrospect, and I may revoke these thoughts tomorrow, but)

I think I have been making a mistake
in supposing that I have a responsibility to handle myself, and if I cannot even do that, what hypocritical business have I wanting to help others?

and in supposing that I was too small and broken that I could not be used by God to work among people. He would have to rebuild me first.

I even have quoted on the sidebar, the great role to others that one man, broken on the wheels of living, can serve.
I think I had imagined that one must be adequately repaired, and one could not function while breaking or in a state of disrepair.

And it is good and responsible to know yourself, to handle yourself, but not when these preparations obstruct or delay or dismiss being helpful to others.

Because we are all blind and stumbling and breaking, caterpillars on the rim of a glass.* One of the few things we can have is each other. Perhaps I have no business or ability in guiding, but it matters that we let ourselves be led.

And I am being rebuilt, but by no means should this process inhibit me from giving of the little I have.

I have made the mistake of thinking that I must be careful to maintain and protect what has been given to me, since what I have is not my own.

And it is true, that it is not my own,
but my response should be instead to share it, to always risk breaking again. I am not rebuilt to last.

a candle must not fear fire
books were meant to be deshelved, read, and shared
tents were made to be weathered outdoors




God did not fix Moses or Gideon or Jonah or Abraham first.
He called them as they were.

This is sometimes frightening, but that's only when I forget that all I have is what's been given to me, and it was not given grudgingly - only when I am too distracted trying to keep my own head above water to feel the little nudging currents around me. I should know by now that when submerged, I am given gills.


* (There is a type of caterpillar which is blind and spends its larval stage in a sort of caterpillar herd. They move by feeling their brothers and sisters around them and moving with them. A scientist once placed these caterpillars around the rim of a glass, head to tail. Feeling the first one move, the rest followed, marching indefinitely forever in circles.)