Arrows

I have spent years dwelling on this in search of words,
but perhaps it would be best to simply quote as well as I can remember.


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Summer of 2006. June. In Los Angeles for our brief training and states-side orientation before heading to Cairo.

I was going on an IVCF Global Urban Trek to volunteer for Sudanese refugee schools in Cairo. IVCF (InterVarsity Christian Fellowships) is a Christian organization (and one which I appreciate the attitude of) so part of our time in LA was spent in readings, meditation and prayer, and gathering to worship together. On one of our last nights in the states, we had a worship service that had a lot of scheduled freedom at the end, encouraging us to use the time as we pleased - to sing, pray, pray in groups, wander about the room to different stations meant to provide encouragement, inspiration, and topics of prayer and consideration, etc ...

I remember a man - one of the leaders (and, if I remember correctly, writer of the book used for our content reading on urban slums) praying for several people in turn. I don't remember which of us asked, but he prayed for me as well.

I don't remember if I told him, but I had been asking God to help me use my freedom well, and to be functional as I was meant to be. I had felt that I'd taken some sustained psychological damage in the previous few years, and wanted desperately to be overcome useless obstructing fears, to be functional, to navigate the width, breadth and depth of my freedom, and be useful, and to guide my life in accordance with the will of God so as to better enable these things.

He placed his hands - I think on my shoulders - and prayed out loud.

I think he asked for healing, strength, direction, and
he said I was like an arrow - one that God could send, flying true towards its goal.


And yes - for years I have considered my circumstances (at times) in terms of the words chosen by this one man.
Maybe I wanted it to be true.


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I believed in Love - and aligned myself with what I thought were the true and faithful practices of this belief.

I have tried to be true in the only way I know how, and I feel that this path has taken me through a length of damage and darkness, seeming at times to be unusefully detrimental and destructive.

It has been strange to think of God in the old ways.

I comfort myself with the thought that perhaps I am still en route to my target, and that dark and abrasive hell, easier to see with distance, has been a necessary obstacle.

What I asked with my eyes to the sky,

was whether it was really more like the way Venus played the Sybil, or all the gods - lying, deceitful, powerful, arbitrary, evil (she goes so far to say) ?


I still believe in the voice of the sky.