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November 24, 2007
Merry Christmas from Louisville!
In order to meet office mailing deadlines so that letters that will reach you in time for Christmas, this letter is actually being written the weekend after Thanksgiving. Advent hasn’t even started yet, and yellow leaves are still falling through the early morning sunshine onto the frosted ground.
In some ways, I think that’s fitting. Christians are called to see things that aren’t really here yet, to see next year’s soil in this year’s fallen leaves, to see next year’s oak seedlings in every acorn scattered on the ground. We are solidly rooted in the past, of course; we claim as historical truth that Jesus lived and died and rose. But at the same time, we are invited to live both fully in the present and in the future, to watch like a sentry in the night, alert to every tiny clue, to imagine the coming of the kingdom of God, and to accept the invitation to work like crazy so that our days have meaning in bringing that day closer. My ancestors in northern Europe used to drag greenery into their huts and light candles and burn Yule logs during the darkest seasons as an affirmation that brighter times were coming. We Christians were right to appropriate those symbols. We long for spring’s triumph even when we know that the days are still growing darker around us.
Mother and child, painted on an ancient church wall, Ethiopia. I think of Mary, a young, unmarried woman, “deserving” divorce from her engagement by the standards of the day. I think of Mary eight months pregnant, hearing the obscene orders from the authorities that she make a 70-mile journey on foot or donkey. How many village women had Mary seen die in childbirth, how many stillborn children in those days of high mortality? Too many, I suspect, and those experiences had to have left their scars. I picture Mary a long way from the white and blue visions we paint of the Queen of Heaven, her hair perfectly combed, her hand outstretched in serene blessing. Mary walked in a dark and violent world, marginalized, powerless, a fearful, nameless refugee, just one more number for the empire’s tally.
But each step she took brought her closer to Bethlehem, a future beyond imagining, full of light and angels and wondering shepherds, and salvation beyond the reach of any empire.
This coming year will bring an extraordinary amount of change for the Whearty family. God willing, Lora and Bruce will finish our current assignments at the PC(USA) national offices in Louisville, and Bruce will complete class work, pass comps, and defend a dissertation proposal for his Ph.D. from the University of Louisville. Emily will graduate from high school and get settled in college, probably somewhere near Kinsey here in Louisville. And then this so-close family, which has shared so much in Montana and Vanuatu and Kentucky, will begin to scatter. We are grateful for the years together, with so much laughter and closeness, but this is autumn, when it’s time for seeds to scatter abroad and find new soil in which to grow. Kinsey and Emily will grow in separate directions, toward professions in music and education. Bruce and Lora will start learning Amharic, move to a third-floor apartment on a girls-school campus in Addis Ababa, and step into a new culture and new assignments. Lora will be teaching English (at what level we do not yet know) and Bruce will be working in teacher mentoring, the development of new schools, and his dissertation about teacher training in Ethiopia. We are excited to be offered the chance to promote the education of young women in Africa, to be part of a quiet, long-term revolution that will challenge all sorts of empires of privilege, and help take one small step down an obscenely long road toward justice and equality and light.
There will be difficult challenges ahead, and dark times. Please remember us in prayer. We will need it as we accept new challenges, and endure separations and loneliness. But we are blessed by having a vision, as small as a candle light in winter, of the destination ahead, and we are grateful that so many of you are accompanying us in prayer and support. We look forward with optimism to the coming year and what this next journey will bring. Watch! Who knows what clues of the kingdom we will see together in the coming year!
We live, of course, in the comfort and security of empire, on the “inside,” and we are tempted to think that the powerless, the marginalized, and the refugees are somehow “outside” by God’s will. What a blessing it would be if we could see beyond the comfortable borders we draw around ourselves! What a blessing to glimpse each person we meet as pregnant with an unknown blessing, holding an amazing future hidden within! And what a blessing it would be if each of us could embody that hope within ourselves. What will we labor for together in the coming year? What births will we see that will be our offering of light?
Joy to the world!
Love and peace,
Bruce and Lora Whearty
The 2007 Mission Yearbook for Prayer &
Study, p. 261 |
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