God Quest: God Discovered in Everyday Places

Prologue—In the Beginning

“Write. Do it now. Don’t wait.”

My church friend is right. How much time do I have? To do that thing, tugging at my heart. I write, but I am no literary savant. I am a business professional. Unemployed and middle-aged, but a business professional. Surely my business communication skills and advancing age count for something.

And how does a call feel? I can’t shake the quiet, persistent pull at heart and mind. It won’t go away. Even with a career (until I got canned) and the busyness of raising children and caring for a home, nothing mutes the siren call. The silent whisperer does not relent.

It pairs with a growing hunger. The spiritual ambling of earlier years is not suiting my middle age. It isn’t good enough. The clock is ticking. The alarm sounding. My relationship with God feels separate from my daily life.

As a cradle Anglican—baptized Catholic but raised as an Anglican–ideas intrigue me. For years, I’ve been journaling: church sermons, book passages, reflections, stories of grace. I’ve gathered a lot of words. But why, and for what?

Yet, the spiritual churning and book-writing bug are circling each other. It is a showdown. A standoff. Either God is vibrant, real and in everything, or not. My need to know is impatient. I resist the notion that God stands only at the periphery of my life.

My heart aches to understand my Creator better.

Something has to change.

What if I were to pull on the threads of my journalling? I have stories. People talk to me. It is in their stories that I find hope. Are the answers in everyday places?

“Write. Do it now. Don’t wait.”

As I write this prologue, God Quest is an idea. Maybe a beginning.

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

Carolin M. Paradis

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.”

(John 1:1-5 NCV)

The opening verses from John’s gospel are a favourite Bible passage. They have a poetic flow; a seamless rhythm. The separate words, when joined, suggest an undivided unity. I have the same sense studying the tapestries adorning my church.

My gaze is drawn to the vibrant fabric blocks of an altar frontal. With eyes tracing the intricate stitching of patterns and shapes, I am struck by the myriad choices of design and colour.

At the heart of the quilt is the pre-eminent symbol of 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 gentler, rounded edges. Multi-hued fabric panels fill the beams. At the centre are three superimposed, intertwining circles. I am reminded of a Venn diagram. The seamstress’ representation captures one of the deep mysteries of Christian faith: the inseparable nature of Father, Son and Holy Spirit, often referred to as the Trinity. The picture completes with rays of sun erupting from the centre cross, splaying golden beams; streams of light spreading to a black star-studded border as if straining to reach the outer limits of the universe.

How the seamstress laboured. Her work began as a puzzle held in thought. Then, the disparate parts came together; a seamless fit into a fascinating mosaic.

Kicking Tires

The quilt intrigues me, but I am captivated by its creator. A retired homemaker living a quiet country life; nothing mysterious about that. Pat seems ordinary, leading quilting classes for the youth at our church. But I study her too, less obviously than the quilts–even shyly–sometimes close up and sometimes at a distance. I think I am kicking the tires of the work she is doing. It’s what you do when you buy a new car. You take it on a test drive. I pick at a starting thread, looking for a lead to a creative unfolding. Inside my head, I ask: Can I do what she does, but with words?

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

The kids she mentors stitch together quilts they send to impoverished children in Africa. There were sixteen in the last batch. How many, I wondered, felt the love stitched into the blankets when they wrapped themselves against frigid nights?

I caught Pat in the church hall after the service.

“You know, watching what you do with the kids and the quilts has 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 talks about their current project.

“It’s turned into more than I thought. Who would have imagined? God is full of surprises.”

There is a special light that radiates when Pat talks. It takes my breath away, and I marvel. Pat’s ministry is accomplishing Merriam-Webster dictionary’s “something.” And I want something of that radiance seeping from her pores.

I watched Pat’s ministry grow. To me, she attends 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 have guarded my spirituality as a private, closeted secret.

I grew up in a household where my mother and her parents were born in England; half my family was British. Dad, my brother and I were Canadian. Dad’s mother was also an emigrant from England. The influences were distinct. Speaking about God was what we did at church through communal or silent prayer. God, faith, and spirituality were not dinner-time discussion subjects.

As an adult, my family and a few friends understood a smattering of my faith-life. But it was rare when I shared the deeper contents of my heart. Nobody at work knew about my spiritual inclinations or that I was a churchgoer. I was careful. Fearful of the label religious nut-bar or worse. Irrespective of my relative silence, I wasn’t yet capable of communicating the accumulating ideas.

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. But where Pat gathers heartfelt expressions of God in the world through cloth, my template would be 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, I trusted to see results when I put energy into projects. Most times this worked. With an excellent career and opportunities to learn and grow, I enjoyed the work. Until the company downsized.

With no results, I pour buckets of time and energy into finding another job. I labour, but to no avail. A real kick-in-the-pants to a mindset cultivated over decades.

This same frustration surfaces when I pray. To what end are my efforts in cultivating an inner world? On good days, I am confident my job loss is part of God’s bigger plan for my life. On so-so days, I am fairly certain of his control. He knows where things are going. On bad days, I despair. For years, my template was: when you put in effort, you get results.

With a growing realization and some dismay, I sense God’s template is different. The design being broad in scope, weighted in depth, and with details not clear unless viewed from a greater height than an individual’s limited perspective. Impatient for results, I long for the privilege of a top-down view.

Recently, I received a peek from the pinnacle. Not in my life. That part is still unfolding. It was in John’s experience that I glimpsed God’s synchronistic nature and how she does things.

The Design

“I didn’t know what to do. But I had to do something.”

These were John’s words as we sat across the table sipping coffee in Tim Horton’s on a bright December afternoon in 2012.

It was easy to talk to John. A quick glance at my watch surprised me. Two hours had gone, and we hadn’t run out of words. 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, organised by the Anglican Diocese of Toronto, and others through World Vision Canada. Their travels to different countries included work to support impoverished communities. On their trip to Kenya in June 2011, the Anglican Diocese of Toronto had organised 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. The result was 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 that the mission team entered to bring medical supplies. The makeshift clinic attracted hundreds of visitors; ninety per cent were women and children, with the majority between the ages of twelve and fourteen. Many were pregnant and had AIDS. Often pregnant girls seeking treatment arrived, supporting babies in their arms. The lack of male presence was noticeable.

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 many young teenage girls, and many of them with children. I don’t remember how I met her; she was just there when we were giving stuff out. She was different; with 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 something about her presence that struck me.”

He looked up, beaming.

“You know she wrote me a thank-you note. I keep it in my wallet.”

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

“I know how tough it is to bring up kids. My kids are grown, but for a long time I was a single dad. Bringing up two daughters isn’t easy, even in a great country like Canada. “

I realised the source of John’s protective nature, which was further solidified by his concluding comment.

“It bothers me the things that could happen to Emmah. It’s a terrible place to grow up.”

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 thoughts of the girl in the slum persisted. She never left his mind or his heart. He worried about her prospects for the future, ending in pregnancy and AIDS. John is a man of faith. He prayed for her well-being. He prayed for protection against the ever-present threat of violence and rape. God had placed a quiet urging in his heart that did not go away. He laboured to find an answer. Maybe securing her education would offer just enough leverage to break out of the Kibera slum.

For over a year, John prayed. He implored God for discernment and direction.

“Lord, what am I to do? My heart wraps around this little girl. How am I supposed to help? I don’t even know her last name or her circumstances.”

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

Not widely recognised 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 take care of ailing family members. Humanitarian agencies working with local staff often lose key people, creating sizable gaps in their ability to communicate at home and abroad. In the same way, John’s attempts were likely hindered.

The frustrations and roadblocks never diminished. Neither did the call in John’s heart to do something. Unknown 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.

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