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January 31, 2007
Happy New Year!
I am always hopeful at the New Year; maybe it’s
a congenital defect of some sort. You’d think after all
the worn out old years, some of them with their fair share of
disappointments, I would greet a new one with skepticism, but
I don’t. And I like the timing of New Year’s Day,
too. There are two other New Year’s Days for me, one in
September from my years as a teacher, and one, of course, in the
springtime. But this one, in the dark times, when summer is hard
to remember and spring is hard to hope for, is nice. It’s
a good plan to celebrate at least those three hopeful holidays,
and maybe the first of each month, too, and we might as well throw
in every Sunday. What the heck! Let’s just say “Happy
New Year!” every morning. So “Happy New Year!”
This wish is renewable every 24 hours for the rest of your life!
One of my resolutions this year is to get back
to writing monthly mission letters. Three of them will be sent
out by post in the course of the year, and all of them will be
posted on our Web page.
If you would like to receive them as emails whenever they are
sent, please send that request to me, Bruce
Whearty.
In Vanuatu, there is a law that requires everybody
to stop celebrating New Year’s by February first and go
back to work. Folks spend most of January visiting neighboring
villages and singing carols and exchanging gifts that are then
passed on to the next village. It takes a full month to refresh
all those interlocking ties and celebrate everything that binds
the people together.
We attended the 27th Annual Louisville Boar’s
Head and Yule Log Festival, and it was wonderful. There were ancient
carols, and costumes including beefeaters and kings and nobles
and peasants, and even a bunch of bagpipers with a drum line.
It was fun, a trip to our own (idealized) history, about 500 or
800 years ago. And it was strange to look at it through eyes that
have seen Vanuatu celebrations, where there is always the interesting
blend of the imported gospel and the traditional customs. We tended
to be a little grossed out in Vanuatu by the pig-clubbings that
accompanied the dedication of a church or a marriage or a chief’s
investiture, and suddenly here we were watching actors represent
our own ancestors as they paraded with a papier mache boar’s
head. It was a lot like Vanuatu! We teared up at the closing “O,
Come, All Ye Faithful” where the cast paraded out together,
all the people, little kids and grandparents, no matter whether
their costume belonged to a noble or a serf. A spectacle had suddenly
become a sacrament.
Emily was ordained as an elder this month. It
felt very fitting to answer, with the rest of the congregation,
the question that we were posed about accepting her leadership.
“Yes, we do.” Sort of a rite of passage there, a coming-of-age
ceremony, but I’m not sure which generation is finally growing
up. Then last weekend, Lora and Emily spent the weekend at a training
retreat for the session. It was held at an old convent not far
from Louisville. They had plenty of time to think and paths to
walk, and they got to hear whooping cranes migrating overhead.
I’m taking two classes this semester toward
my doctorate, one on qualitative research (interviews and observation,
as opposed to statistics) and one on language acquisition. I’m
particularly interested in bilingual kids and what we need to
do in schools—like almost anywhere Lora and I might work
overseas—where the kids are using their second or third
language.
Kinsey complained of abdominal pain a couple
of weeks ago. A doctor’s visit and a CAT scan turned up
nothing, but the ER visit the next day (when the pain got to be
too much) identified an ovarian cyst that had ruptured. Kinsey
was on heavy drugs for a bit, and we learned that she really shouldn’t
do homework when on painkillers, but she is back to normal now.
We hope that this was a single episode, but there’s no way
to know for now.
I am sorry to share with you the news that Lois
Anderson, a retired PC(USA) missionary to Africa, and her daughter
Zelda White, were killed in a carjacking outside Nairobi last
week. Lois and her husband spent their honeymoon in language school
and served for more than 40 years in Sudan and Kenya. We ask you
to remember their families in prayer, as well as all missionaries
around the world who place themselves in harm’s way for
the cause of the kingdom. Such an event reminds us of how fleeting
life is and how, if we wish to make a difference, we’d best
resolve to do it today.
We hope that you all are warm and well and haven’t
spent much time in ER’s this month. I guess I could recommend
it once in a while just to remind us of our priorities, but it’s
not a habit I want to cultivate. Resolve to celebrate hope no
matter what the calendar says, and turn your entertainments into
sacraments. Bind together the past and the future with song and
solemn vows. And don’t forget to create enough silence in
your life to hear the fleeting music overhead.
Love and peace,
Bruce
The 2007 Mission Yearbook for Prayer
& Study, p. 259
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