9 The Undiscovered Country

As the time for me to travel to Africa draws near, people ask me if I'm excited. I don't know how to answer. Today Henri Nouwen helped me find an answer, although an indirect one.

Since right around the turn of the century I felt God tugging on my heart in a new direction. The way opened from a cozy warm room through a weathered wooden door into an undiscovered country. A central aspect of the journey has been to create chunks of time to wait for God and to listen intently. It was to turn from the absurd (surdus meaning deaf) and lean into God. "Absurd living is a way of life in which we remain deaf to the voice [of God] which speaks to us in our silence."1 All of my running about from one urgent activity to the next was keeping me deaf to God's 'gentle whisper'. I Kings 19:12

This past summer I uncovered another aspect of the undiscovered country while in the Trappist Monastery of Gethsemani, Kentucky (the monastery where Thomas Merton spent the last half of his life). In the garden at Gethsemani, while waiting near a statue of Christ I heard, "Watch with me." I felt like I was being drawn into obedience (from the root audire which means listening) toward a more mature way of life. "To be obedient means to be constantly attentive to this active presence of God and to allow God, who is only love, to be the source as well as the goal of all we think, say, and do."2 By saying "watch with me", Christ was inviting me to be fully aware of His presence in my life by making the time to lean forward and listen carefully to the whisper from the One across the table.

So, I can't really say I'm excited to go to Africa. I'll be traveling thousands of miles for days to arrive at a place of stark resources, entirely unknown to me. I'll be away from my lovely wife, two sons and my friends for almost a month. I know I'll learn far more from the people of Africa than I could ever hope to provide to them. I go to Africa in obedience knowing that spiritual maturation is the willingness to stretch out my arms, to have someone else dress me and to be led where I would rather not go. John 21:18b

1 Henri Nouwen, In My Own Words (Liguori, Missouri: Linguori Publications), p. 89

2 Ibid., p. 90