The soul, uneasy and confin'd from home, rests and expatiates in a life to come.

Come late November, I will be heading to London with my mum, brothers and aunty to visit my cousin whom I have not seen for more almost 10 years. His French wife has given birth to a beautiful baby girl and we figured, if not this year then my aunty may never get another chance to see him. She has not seen him in 20 years since he left for his studies. Much has happened in these 20 years and our family has reasons why this reunion hasn’t taken place earlier, but that is not as important as the fact that after 2 decades of tears, prayers and worries, my 73 year old aunt will finally reunite with her own flesh and blood. As thrilled as I am about returning to a charming city like London (which is one of my favourite places in the world), it is not the shopping or the sight-seeing that I look forward to the most. Something beautiful this way comes, and I am grateful to be able to be part of it.

Lately, a recurring theme in my own walk has been that of brokenness in the human condition. I have no interest in turning this post into an exposé on my family’s dirty laundry or a lamentation about all the heart wrenching things I’ve witnessed and experienced. Rather, I am increasingly convinced of how redemption is still to be found amidst the broken shards of someone's life, for hope springs eternal in the human breast. I am inspired by the people who bravely accept the crosses they are given and silently cling even more tightly to their crosses when its weight threatens to break their spirit and their back. Some of these people I am related to, some I happen to meet or serve in my line of work. The triumph of the human spirit never fails to amaze me and take my breath away.

Sometimes I still am haunted by images of these people weeping, as their world crashes down around them like the walls of Jericho. It is the silence of their broken despair that often guts me the most. Sometimes, I feel like a paramedic. Certain calls I get, I succeed at reviving those who are down; others I am really just there to “bring out the dead”. I want to help, I fully desire it, but I also know exactly what my limitations are. Some parts of me still feel ill-equipped for the situations I often find myself in even if my superiors have assessed that I have “the constitution” for it.

As much as I fought it in the beginning, this facet of my personal vocation seems to be firmly in place. Certain talents I have been given, I daren’t bury them in the ground anymore. For it was the servant who buried his one talent in the ground that drew the ire the Master. The Master found this servant to be a wicked, lazy one. So much of this process has been struggling and wrestling like mad (with Him). Of late, I have started to develop a sense ‘just knowing in my heart and in my soul’.

And yet, I cannot describe it or give a method statement for it in any human language. It’s almost as if another transponder within that taps into a soul frequency is the only part of me that can pick up His signals; the clues to which are often so easy to miss. I wish I could tell you that the answers I have found (thus far) came one historic day when the heavens opened up and a great booming voice from above read out His will, but that’s not how He’s chosen to speak.

I have written about the dry spell of in-articulation I was plunged into when I returned from Rome last year. I still have employ of the words in the human language but they are empty without His spirit in them. So really, I am able to express little or nothing of what God is doing. Amidst this exile from truly demonstrative and effective articulation, I have continued the daily living in “muted tones”; trudging on without the ecstatic joys of being able to communicate fully all what one feels or apprehends. To give an analogy, it feels like being an autistic child. To force the resumption of that expression which I lost would only result in spewing of verbiage.

I find it a great suffering to not be able to give vent to the vicissitudes of the journey and thereby effectively bear it alone. Yet I know what suffering achieves/creates in people, both the good and the bad effects. I search for answers but am respectful of the evocative lessons to be learnt; hidden in these bittersweet symphonies. All that can be said is that my duty of the moment is to serve the remainder of this ‘exile’ in obedience.

Hope springs eternal in the human breast;
Man never Is, but always To be blest:
The soul, uneasy and confin'd from home,
Rests and expatiates in a life to come.

Alexander Pope,
An Essay on Man, Epistle I, 1733

the fool for Christ