Watch and Wait

The early church community was advised to keep watch and wait in the Gospel of Luke. I read that scripture, which is the assigned reading in the Epsicopal church this week,  while I was visiting a section of Botswana that looks like a sea of rippling tin. Houses made of corrugated tin and cast off construction supplies line dirt paths. These boxes house almost 20,000 people  including illegal immigrants from Zimbabwe people struggling with illness and fighting to survive on a daily basis.  It was the first time in a long time that I actually got mad at a reading. Who can just watch and wait while the world looks like its crumbling around you?  It has taken me another week of reflection and reading to understand the advice offered in the reading and take it to heart.

Watch is great advice for anyone who wants to love the world.  Its hard to walk around blind to the pain of others and turn away from anything that smells bad or looks unpleasant if you want to love.  We need to pay attention and watch.  Watch out for the moments we feel led to act, watch out for the feeling that we are being called, watch out for the beauty of the spirit of God filling the space.

Wait is great advice too.  Wait just means that we know something else is coming.  It doesn’t mean that we sit around and do nothing.  We wait like we wait for the birth of a baby.  We prepare for the arrival and have parties and make a home and announce the good news to as many people as we know.  We are waiting for fruition of our journey and what comes after that. That is both on an individual and universal level.

Now I want to go back.  I want to go back to Africa and be able to watch and wait in that same space where I was standing and thinking that I couldn’t watch and wait. I want to go back to that ground and pay very close attention.

Images from our journey

Patricia - a retired social worker at the hospice

Tiny is in the final stages of AIDS & cervical cancer. Una, a nurse from Holy Cross, visits her daily.

Leselo, an AIDS patient, is paralyzed from the waist down. Her oldest son, pictured, is her primary caregiver.

Hope

~from Gaborone, Botswana~

Today my family and I met Tiny, Leselo, and Eric.  They are all three great teachers on the subject of the global crisis of AIDS.  They are each living alone on brink of death in shadowed, cold and bare rooms of concrete.  The each taught us about the face of God and how it is hard and beautiful to look upon.  They taught us about gratitude as they talked about God’s blessings in the small offerings the nurses provide on their daily visits to their shacks.  They all greeted us from their pallets, and talked about their individual struggles.  They taught us that AIDS is the beginning of many problems.  It makes the body vulnerable to many other diseases.  Tiny has contracted cervical cancer and is trying to make arrangements for her children.  Eric has no one to help him from his family and so he struggles for food.  When you get sick enough so that you can’t work, you die of starvation.  We met their young relatives who stand outside the dump and wait for the trucks to come so they can be the first to ravage the trash. 
They taught us a number like 60,000 orphans is just numbing, while meeting Leselo’s three boys who are soon going to be orphaned is horrific. They taught us that while we may be able to politicize the issues of AIDS in southern Africa and so distance ourselves from its harsh realities, it holds no political associations.   They taught us that it is impossible to describe the reality of AIDS in southern Africa and that no words will do Tiny, Leselo, or Eric justice about the pain of their lives or the beauty of their spirits.

Before the girls would have their picture taken, they ran and hid the trash they had collected.The disease in Botswana seems to be a disease that loves poverty and those who are vulnerable.  One doctor said the strain of the disease in Southern Africa is more virulent and unrelenting than the one we know about in the states.  The Holy Cross Hospice is slowly working to build up its staff and meet the endless mountains of needs in numerous ways.  They have asked that the Center for Contemplative Justice and St. Augustine’s Chapel fund one nurse to provide palliative care and oversee volunteer nurses that come to help.  The cost associated with this would be $15,000 a year for two years, an amount we could raise in an evening.  Marcus believes that this is possible and has made a commitment to seeing it through.  Anna, Francis, and the other volunteers who have gone and stayed at the Hospice all would love for us to continue to support their work.
     I loved this day.  I loved being with the workers from the Hospice, with Levi, Caney and Moses, and with Tiny, Leselo, and Eric.  I loved it because hope is not dead as long as people are willing to keep working, and the only way that they are willing to keep working against the mountain of pain and problems is because of love.  So I felt love in waves all day.  I swore to each person I met that I would say their names at the St. Augustine’s altar each week and felt nothing but love for them.  I am even writing this email with love and tears in my eyes for the whole mess we call creation and how love keeps sorting through our vast wastelands until something blooms.  I know that some who read this will want to make a contribution to the $30,000 goal.  I know that some will be moved to want to go and volunteer.  I know that some will commit the Hospice to their daily prayers.  All of those gifts and those already given are received with much gratitude. In peace, becca