Circle of Life - Chinese Paper cut
Personal Copy
“Which is most important of all the commandments?” Jesus said, “The first in importance is, ‘Listen, Israel: The Lord your God is one; so love the Lord God with all your passion and prayer and intelligence and energy.’ And here is the second: ‘Love others as well as you love yourself.’ There is no other commandment that ranks with these.”
Mark 12:28b-31 (MSG)
In a recent edition of Christian Century, Ashley Makar shares reflections of Congolese immigrants during a civil rights pilgrimage. She also reflected on her own history and friendships with immigrants from South Sudan escaping to Israel. Here is one summary message from one of the teenagers:
“Some histories are brutal, doing the beautiful takes forever.”. Gladys Mwilelo
This caught my attention because of a friendship with a Congolese family over the last five years. This friendship is on multiple levels given the ages of individuals. What is most rewarding has been the transition from strangers to neighbors and now kin. It takes time and a community. It takes patience to learn together.
At its best, our journey is more than just learning. It is captured in part by this quote from the novel, Transcendent Kingdom.
I wanted, above all else, to be good. And I wanted the path to that goodness to be clear. I suspect that this is why I excelled at math and science, where the rules are laid out step by step, where if you did something exactly the way it was supposed to be done, the result would be exactly as it was expected to be. “If you are living a godly life, a moral life, then everything you do can be a prayer,” my mother said. “Instead of trying to pray all day, live your life as prayer.”
This kind of prayer life is where joy finds all of us - thanks for the gifts of new kindred relationships.
Marvin
References
Makar, A. From Kinshasa to Montgomery: A civil rights pilgrimage through the eyes of Congolese refugee teenagers
https://www.christiancentury.org/issue/apr-21-2021
Makar, A. (2014). You were strangers: Dispatches from exile. Amazon Kindle.
Gyasi, Yaa. Transcendent Kingdom (p. 52). Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.
Boyle, G. (2017). Barking to the Choir: The Power of Radical Kinship. Simon & Schuster.
