Hello Adventure!

It’s 3 am.

I can’t sleep.

I’m full of travel excitement – we leave today for Angola.

My birthplace.

A special adventure begins - which started back in the 1930’s when Dad and Mum married in London, England and they felt called to be medical missionaries in Africa. They built a hospital and faithfully stayed and worked there for over 30 years in the central part of the country, until the dreadful civil war eventually pushed them back to Canada.

I have a zillion stories about this, but right now the one that comes to the surface is the ongoing story of “hello and goodbye.” We lived in a culture, a family where someone was always leaving home or arriving back from travelling across the planet. It made complete sense then to leave home and travel to boarding school in Zambia (Northern Rhodesia) at 7 years old. Packing suitcases was a regular part of my life. I still get “packing jitters,” and for years used to have nightmare “packing dreams.”

This tender picture was taken when my Dad held me in his arms as he left me on the school playground. It holds so much complex and paradoxical feeling that words cannot express. Yet somehow today, it comes around full circle, so I share it as a gift from and for memory and mystery.

Yesterday I wrote in my journal:

It’s so good to live in the place of abundance and provision, aware at this stage of my life that it is not in my hands. I am resting in the arms of Love who is always there showing up in many forms.

In going to Angola, walking again in my parents’ footsteps is like returning to ancestral homelands and tapping into the sacred call of God which took them there – a lifetime call. Now both Uli and I return – for the first time travelling together to Africa. And to Angola – of all the possibilities! Doors have suddenly opened in a season when both of us are in a pivot point. On an alchemical threshold of promise. Decisions, relationships, and past choices have mysteriously brought us here. What lies ahead is unknown and yet clearly unfolding in a curious way.

Our body/soul/spirit suitcases have been “prepared and packed” in ten thousand ways. We are listening and ready to pick up old and new threads, to weave and work and color-in the joy and tender beauty of this life-long adventure as it continues to unfold.

If you’ve been reading the US news, you may have noticed that President Biden is on his way to Angola today to stir up business and prosper political interests on the centuries-old colonial stage.

And - Did you read this article yesterday about how this coast of Angola, where we will vacation in bliss was the final ‘goodbye’ site for a multitude of precious African people, sold forever into slavery? Such immense violence and grief this country still knows. It is hard to fathom and crucial to return this time fully aware of my undeniable privilege as a white woman in being able to say “hello” again. To unearth a core of wholeness as I plant my feet on the shores of this beloved and broken land and experience home.

I’m holding all this volatile mix of shadow and light as a churning cry in my heart today as I dive into the unknown. To trust this homecoming in all its complexity. To walk softly into this adventure. To remember Micah 6:8, “You have been shown O mortal, what is good. And what does the Holy require of you? To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God.”

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I leave you dear reader with this mosaic of thoughts and questions today.

Packing and preparation for all the ‘hellos and goodbyes’ of what lies ahead in all our lives is essential. It also can lead to enormous anticipatory anxiety of fear and worry.

How do each of us plan and prepare and rest and ‘let go’ into the unknown?

Where do we put our faith and our fear?

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