Unknowing Aliveness
Originally Posted on Kusema: To Speak, To Talk, To Tell
Later this week I leave for two months in Iringa. While there are certain set pieces already in place (things like travel schedules, a wish list of tasks to accomplish, and a handful of big events to attend), what I find most striking is how much I don't know about what is ahead of me.
I don't know who will come knocking on the door of our apartment on any given day or who I will bump into on the path behind the park on my way to the main market. I don't know where I'll be called to preach or the kinds of insight I'll be asked to share with our guests from Saint Paul as they make sense of what they are seeing and hearing. I don't know what lessons our companions have to teach me this time around - be it from my colleague, Pastor Msigwa, or the students we will meet while visiting secondary schools in February.
In short, the more I travel. . . The more I go. . . The more I realize I don't know.
And in that state of admitted unknowing, I'm finding there is a certain degree of aliveness. A poem by Anne Hillman that I recently came across conveys this sentiment far more succinctly than I. It is offered here for your consideration:
We look with uncertainty
by Anne Hillman
We look with uncertainty
beyond the old choices for
clear-cut answers
to a softer, more permeable aliveness
which is every moment
at the brink of death;
for something new is being born in us
if we but let it.
We stand at a new doorway,
awaiting that which comes...
daring to be human creatures,
vulnerable to the beauty of existence.
Learning to love.
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| Flying Over Iringa - April 2014 |
I don't know who will come knocking on the door of our apartment on any given day or who I will bump into on the path behind the park on my way to the main market. I don't know where I'll be called to preach or the kinds of insight I'll be asked to share with our guests from Saint Paul as they make sense of what they are seeing and hearing. I don't know what lessons our companions have to teach me this time around - be it from my colleague, Pastor Msigwa, or the students we will meet while visiting secondary schools in February.
In short, the more I travel. . . The more I go. . . The more I realize I don't know.
And in that state of admitted unknowing, I'm finding there is a certain degree of aliveness. A poem by Anne Hillman that I recently came across conveys this sentiment far more succinctly than I. It is offered here for your consideration:
We look with uncertainty
by Anne Hillman
We look with uncertainty
beyond the old choices for
clear-cut answers
to a softer, more permeable aliveness
which is every moment
at the brink of death;
for something new is being born in us
if we but let it.
We stand at a new doorway,
awaiting that which comes...
daring to be human creatures,
vulnerable to the beauty of existence.
Learning to love.
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