God Quest - God Discovered in Everyday Places

Prologue: In the Beginning

I adore writing, but I am no literary savant. Apart from work-related business communications, I write about what I see, hear, think, and especially ideas. Ideas about God and people.

In my twenties journal writing was an interest, but it was more like prayer reflections − written conversations with God − than daily historical accounting. Life got busier. Out of time, with marriage and children, the journal stopped. Before my father’s death seven years ago, I began again. I’d capture thoughts: a church sermon that resonated, a book passage that spoke directly, something someone said echoing the thoughts of my heart or a story of grace recounted. A growing hunger for a deeper connection fueled the journal as it became a path of discovery.

As I journeyed, I drew inspiration from people’s stories. They gave me hope, as if though through them God was drawing me into a deeper spirituality. Often ignored, there was a quiet yet persistent tugging within mind and heart, a gentle insistence that seemed to whisper, “Write. Do it now. Don’t wait.” I gathered words (mine and others).

Recently, I perceive a new, more pressing pathway, as if revealed in a fog where the mist suddenly parts. But not a pathway of discovery for relevance and meaning. Albeit desirable goals, my life is full. But beyond the comfort of house, home, and work, brews a spiritual churning. My restlessness drives me to conclude I seek not a “what” but a “whom” and the gathered stories are the clue. They have an underlying resonance. Each story affirming God’s presence even for central characters with no cultivated or acknowledged spirituality. I am searching for God in the stories and attempting to connect with my understanding and experiences.

Since I can remember I have been a Christian­–baptized Catholic but brought up in the Anglican Church. Although I don’t take all the bible teachings at face value, I sense the deeper truths inherent in the holy texts; faith is about relationship. My relationship with God is good but often separate from my daily comings and goings. But the quiet, spiritual ambling of earlier years no longer suits my middle age. The clock ticks and the alarm sounds. There must be more.

Like a stalwart dam holding ready to spill floodwater, my faith journey arrives at a do-or- die place–either God is real and in everything or not. My yearning drives a need to know. Can the spiritual and the material join to forge a strong, vibrant relationship with a God I cannot see or hear, with God’s presence experienced in every breath, thought, action or inaction? And what about grace, healing, and miracles? I want to learn more. But mostly, my heart aches to understand my Creator better. And how does this quest relate to a subtle yet powerful compulsion to write?

As I write his prologue, “The Tapestry” is an idea. Unwritten stories collect. There will be more. Slipped away are notes for safekeeping; reflections of experiences continue, mine and others, but how to join them is a mystery. I only know I must try. I am both excited and fearful.

“In the beginning was the Word...” (Jn 1:1 NIV)

Carolin M. Paradis

December 31, 2012

Chapter 1: The Call − Carolin’s Story

The Word

In the beginning was the Word:

the Word was with God

and the Word was God.

He was with God in the beginning.

All things were made by him, and nothing was made without him.

In him there was life, and that life was the light of all people.

The Light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overpowered it.

(Jn 1:1-5 NCV)

The beginning verses from John’s gospel are favorite bible passages. When read aloud, their sound has a poetic cadence, a seamless rhythm that connects one word to the other. The separate words become complete and whole when joined, suggesting an undivided unity. I have a similar sense when studying the tapestries adorning the church I attend.

A captivating quilt that hangs as an altar frontal draws my gaze. I marvel at the brilliant colour blocks. My eyes trace the patterns and shapes so intricately inter-woven: so many fine stitches, so many choices made as to design and colour.

Displayed at the very centre of the quilt is the pre-eminent symbol of the Christian faith–a crucifix. But unlike any I have seen. Harsh planes associated with a wooden cross–a cruel pier of ancient execution–defer to fabric that shows gentler, rounded edges. Multi-hued panels fill the beams. At the centre are three prominent intertwining circles, super-imposed and reminiscent of a Venn diagram. Here lays a representation, one of the deep mysteries of Christian faith: the inseparable nature of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, often referred to as The Trinity. Finally, rays of sun erupt from the centre cross splaying golden beams; streams of light reaching to a black star-studded border denoting the far reaches of the universe.

How the seamstress must have laboured. Her work was a puzzle: so many small and large pieces to assemble and fit together to create a picture held only as a thought before transforming into a riveting mosaic.

Kicking Tires

The quilt intrigues me, but I am no less captivated by its creator. A retired homemaker living a quiet country life, Pat leads quilting classes for the youth at our church. I study her too, but less obviously–even shyly–sometimes close up and sometimes at a distance. Maybe in my head I am kicking the tires of the work she is doing, like testing a new car to gauge its worth or trying to pick out a starting thread that will lead to a creative unfolding. Secretly asking, can I do what she does, but with words?

The name for what Pat does in our church is a ministry. This can be a person, or thing, through which something is accomplished (Merriam-Webster). What her ministry accomplishes are quilts, clerical robes, and altar frontals that decorate the church. Her quilted art speaks of the multi-layered nature of God, each colour block of fabric denoting diversity and uniqueness. Youth, and adults too, flock to her ministry, and it has grown and flourished.

The kids’ Pat mentors stitch together quilts they send to impoverished children in Africa. There were sixteen in the last batch. I often wonder about the comfort derived by these African children through the love and care poured into each quilt that wraps them against a frigid night.

I catch Pat in the church hall one time after service and tell her, “You know it’s seeing what you are doing with the kids and the quilts that have got me hooked on a book idea.” I don’t think she knows how seriously I have been watching her.

She smiles in response. Bright and animated, Pat tells me on what they are working. She finishes with, “Well, it’s turned into more than I ever thought. Who would have imagined? God is full of surprises.”

There is a special light that radiates when Pat talks. It catches my breath and I marvel.

I watch Pat’s ministry grow. To me, she listens carefully to an intangible, internal call and now takes part in the unfolding of something significant. The unfolding of God’s kingdom on earth? I am encouraged to give voice to my internal impulses, quiet and so long held back. For many years, I guarded my spirituality as a private, closeted secret.

Raised in a household with British influences, speaking about God was what we did through prayer at church and not typically something discussed around the dinner table. As an adult, family and a few friends know of my faith-life, but rarely spoken are the contents of my heart. I have been careful. Fearful of the label religious nut-bar. Irrespective of my reticence, I could not yet share the myriad ideas growing in my head, let alone sensibly communicate.

I suppose the disparate thoughts were like Pat’s pieces of beginning fabric before she assembles and stitches them together. My prayer journal held the pieces. If I responded to an internal call to write a book, I had the starting threads. Pat gathers together heartfelt expressions of God in the world through cloth, but my templates are words.

Ghandi once said, “Your beliefs become your thoughts. Your thoughts become your words.” And the Word is a living instrument calling forth the symphony of life that often sleeps within our souls.

Chapter 2: God’s Design—John’s Story

God’s Template

I am an impatient person. Having worked for years in business management for a large corporation when I put energy into projects, I trusted to see results. Mostly this worked. With an excellent career and opportunities to learn and grow, I enjoyed the work. Until the company downsized.

Now, as I pour buckets of time and energy into procuring another position with no results, this reality contradicts a mindset cultivated over years. I labour, but to no avail.

This same frustration surfaces in prayer. Time and effort extended in cultivating an interior world, but to what end, I wonder? On good days, I am confident my job loss is part of God’s bigger plan for my life. On so-so days, I’m fairly certain he is in control and knows where things are going. But on bad days, I despair. For years, I worked with a template that correlated results with effort: if you tried hard enough, success would follow.

It is with growing dismay I realize pinning my hopes on a likely underdeveloped template steeped in self-reliance may be short-sighted. I sense God’s template is different. His design broad in scope, weighted in depth, and with details not clear unless viewed from a greater height than an individual’s limited perspective. In my impatience for results, I long for the privilege of seeing from this top-down view.

Recently, I received a peek from the pinnacle, but not of my own life; that part is still unfolding. It was in John’s experience where I glimpsed the synchronistic nature of God and how he does things.

The Design

“I just didn’t know what to do. But I knew I had to do something.” These were John’s words as we sat across the table sipping coffees in Tim Horton’s on a bright December afternoon in 2012.

It was easy to talk to John. Checking my watch, to my surprise, two hours had passed, and we had not run out of things to say. With such an open and generous manner, I suspected he had many friends. His smile was a beacon of light directing travellers to the shore of a safe harbour. I could see why the young African girl he was speaking of had responded to his warmth.

***

John and Pat (a retired couple) had been on various mission trips before, some organized by the Anglican Diocese of Toronto, others through World Vision Canada. Their travels to different countries included work to support impoverished communities. On this trip to Kenya in June 2011, the Anglican Diocese of Toronto had organized medical teams to join in an overseas mission.

Pat’s job was to work in the nurseries caring for young children and they assigned John to a mobile medical unit charged with bringing medicine to various distressed districts. It was on one of these four to five-day roving visits that John met Emmah in the Kibera slum.

The Kibera slum is in a suburb of Nairobi, the capital of Kenya. It is a sprawling place that grew after World War I because of the British colonial government’s decision to allow Nubian soldiers who had served during the war to settle in the outskirts of Nairobi. A bleak omission by the British colonial powers was failing to give the soldiers title to the land. As a result, there is no land ownership, no services, no sewage, and not even roads. It is a violent, dirty and desperate place.

It was into this squalid neighbourhood the mission team entered to bring medical supplies. The make-shift clinic attracted hundreds of visitors: ninety percent were women and children, with the majority between the ages of twelve and fourteen. Many were pregnant and had Aids. Often the pregnant girls seeking treatment arrived, already supporting babies in their arms. The lack of male presence was notable.

John doesn’t recall the exact circumstances when he met Emmah, but it was at the clinic. She was one teen, not yet pregnant.

“We were handing out medicine. There were so many young teenage girls and a lot of them with children. I don’t remember how I met her; she just seemed to be there when we were giving stuff out. There was something about her that was different, a bright spark in her eyes. Her English wasn’t good, but we interacted and tried talking to each other. There was a translator, and that helped.”

John took a sip of his coffee, his eyes turned inward and reflective. “There was just something about her that struck me.”

Then he looked up, beaming proudly, “You know she wrote me a thank-you note. I keep it in my wallet.”

I smiled in return. Time had not faded from the ability of the young girl’s gesture to touch John’s heart.

“I know how tough it is to bring up kids,” he continued. “My kids are grown up now, but for a long time, I was a single dad. It wasn’t easy bringing up my two daughters, and Canada is such a great country to live in.”

I realized John’s protective nature, further solidified by his concluding comment, “It bothers me to think of all the things that could happen to Emmah growing up in such a terrible place.”

The Depth

John thought his involvement was over at the end of the service mission trip. He and Pat continued their travels and visited India and Amsterdam. But the girl in the slum never left his mind or his heart; thoughts of her persisted. He worried about her prospects for the future ending in pregnancy and Aids. As a man of faith, he prayed for her well-being and protection from the ever-present threat of violence and rape. God had placed a quiet urging in his heart that did not go away. He wanted to find ways and means to support this young teenager and to help secure her education. Maybe securing her education would be just enough leverage out of the Kibera slum.

For over a year, John prayed. He implored God for discernment and direction. “Lord, what am I to do? You have my heart wrapped around this little girl, but I don’t know what to do or how to help. I don’t even know her last name or her circumstances. I just can’t see how to help.”

All John knew was her first name and the name of a school she had mentioned in one of their limited conversations. Initially, he attempted to connect by e-mail to the various parties that had comprised the service teams: the social workers, the Anglican Diocese in Nairobi, the clinic pharmacist, the school. Each time, he was unsuccessful and received no response.

One challenge not widely recognized where Aids is epidemic is the resulting social instability and stress on local infrastructure. Where acute infections are prevalent, people become sick and cannot work or must leave jobs to tend to ailing family. Humanitarian agencies working with local staff often lose key people. The staffing shortages and loss of continuity create sizeable gaps in an agency’s ability to communicate both locally and abroad. John’s attempts were likely similarly hindered.

The many frustrations and roadblocks encountered never diminished the call to do something. Unknown to John were the seeds of answered prayer planted years earlier. The most astounding facet of Emmah’s story was the foundation laid even before her birth.

***

John and Pat feel blessed − second marriages for both. They have been together for nine years.

During Pat’s first marriage eighteen years earlier, her home had hosted a young African seminary student. Jeff was from Kenya. Pat’s eldest daughter, Jennifer, had become friends with Jeff when they both worked at a Christian radio station in Peterborough, Ontario. Students from Peterborough’s local university, the community college and the bible college ran the radio station. Jennifer was attending Trent University and Jeff the bible college. As Jeff was living in residence while studying, Jennifer invited him to her home for several weekends. There were no other invitations, this was his only experience of Canadian family life during his one-year stay in the country and he enjoyed it very much.

Jennifer and Jeff remained friends long after each moved on from their studies and they stayed in touch through mail, e-mail, and Facebook.

Years later, when Jennifer found out Pat and John were planning to travel to Kenya on a church mission, she contacted Jeff to let him know her mother and step-father would stay in Nairobi. During their mission trip, Jeff came to visit the couple. But John had caught such a severe virus he was bedridden. Pat visited alone, and it was a glad reunion. Jeff was now an ordained pastor in Nairobi.

More than a year ensued of frustrated and failed attempts to connect with the Team Ministry members in Nairobi. Disgruntled and impatient, one day John was complaining to Pat, “I just don’t know what else to do. If God wants me to do this thing, he sure isn’t making it easy.”

Pat was silent for a few minutes, caught up in her thoughts. “Well, you know,” she began, “you might want to try contacting Jeff.” Pausing as if to further cast back in her memories she then added, “I seem to recall when I saw him in Nairobi that he was ministering to the poor in Kibera.”

John had not remembered Pat and Jennifer’s connection with Jeff.