Category: Cross-cultural

The City Within My Chest

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Yesterday, my friend Robynn shared a compelling video with me. The video was of Enrique Garcia Naranjo retelling a story about being stopped by border patrol. Before he gets into the actual story, he set the stage of where he was prior to the incident. He was speaking to a group of high school students in Douglas, Arizona, reciting a poem he had written about his life, describing his “barrio, the holiness of tacos, and the unrelenting spirit of Mexican grandmothers.” He describes the students as people between languages and cultures, as people of the border. At the end of his poem, he told them to get out pens, pencils, and paper and gave them a prompt. He asked them to write about “the city within my chest.”

The prompt deeply resonated with me, and I began pondering the physical missing of places, how sometimes it feels like they literally live within our chests. There is a heaviness to missing places and people, a heaviness of homesickness, a burden defying description. The weight of absence moves from our chests upward, constricting our throats, upward again to a burning in our eyes. Tears come unchecked, seemingly out of nowhere. Such is the power of place.

What city is within your chest? What place is within your chest?

Is it a city from your childhood, a place you’ve never been able to return? Is it the place where you first felt the security of belonging and love? Is it a farm where long summer days had you in bare feet, grass tickling your toes as you ate watermelon without a thought to the privilege and burden of belonging? Is it a beach town where you woke to the sound of the ocean crashing on the shore? Is it a town that kept you safe and secure in the knowledge that you held an undefinable “membership” that wasn’t because of anything you did or didn’t do, but just because you existed?

If you were to write about these places, how would you describe them? What would you choose to bring people into your memory of food and grandmothers? Would it be the pure joy of curry and chapatis as you break out in a sweat from the spices? Would you describe the resilience of boarding school people? Would it be about the grandmother who took your hand when you were young, and prayed you through life when you were older? Would it be about the rushing glory of rivers and forests and the massive snow-capped mountains in the distance, or the crowded spaces of public buses as you join a community of escapees from the cold winter days in a city, the bus driver smiling in empathy as you hop on? Would it be a park where you watch the seasons come and go? Would it be about mountains calling you and long hikes on crisp spring days?

On Sunday afternoons, I carry places and people within my chest. The morning’s liturgical joy gives way to a deep melancholy, particularly when the sky is grey. Staying fully present and focused is a struggle and it is easy to have my mind travel to places far away where I hung my heart, places that are now carried within my chest. My mind goes to Cairo and Karachi, Erbil and Ranya. I carry the sights and sounds of places that will never leave me, the call to prayer, the street vendors selling molasses and bananas on the road below my fourth-floor apartment, the smell of bread baking at dusk, the sunset’s burnished gold and deep pink- benedictions to my days, and the people still there that continue to mark these places on my heart.

In truth, I’ve come to be grateful for these times. They are reminders of the richness of my life, reminders of the gifts that these cities and places gave me. As I surrender to the melancholy, I find comfort. Surrender comes easier with chocolate and a cup of strong, sweet, milky tea. Revisiting memories through photographs that remind me of these lives I lived before are also gifts to accepting the pensive sadness of missing. I’ve learned that surrender can make me stronger, resolute in my desire to make each place count and committed to living well in the present.

To all of us border people, living between the here and there, the now and not yet, the familiar and the foreign, may we carry our places within our hearts and be the richer for it.

“Always border people – caught between citizen and alien, silence and disruption, here and there.”

Enrique Garcia Naranjo

Something is Always Leading Us Home

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The window of our plane showed a grey sky and light rain, leading me to sigh inwardly. We had just arrived in Boston after six days in Savannah, Georgia. The weather in Savannah could be described as – well, perfect. Light breeze, no humidity, and between 65 and 70 degrees every day. The old oak trees that are quintessential Savannah were magnificent, their Spanish moss (which we found out was neither Spanish nor moss) gracefully draped across branches.

Coming home to a place where your body and soul don’t always feel like they belong can be a challenge. When I look out the window as I fly into Boston’s Logan International Airport, I think ‘why are there so many trees?’ It is a disconcerting feeling, a sense of alienation instead of belonging. As I make my way through the airport to ground transportation, I go into another space between – that space between the airport and the home we have made in Boston. I walk through the chain-link gate of our small city house and through the door. I know from experience that I have to immediately do something tangible, something concrete that says to me “You’re home. Rest. Breathe.” Sometimes it’s arranging flowers, other times it’s baking bread, still other times it is just getting unpacked as quickly as possible and removing suitcases from view. Once I have done that, my soul begins to settle – at least for a time.

What I have come to know is that my struggle for home is not unique. I have also come to a greater understanding of a spiritual reality that I have known since I was a small child, but that has grown in its theological significance through the years. And that is that no matter what home I have or find here on this earth, there will always be something leading me farther up and farther in, something always leading me to my true home.

Heimat is a German word with no English equivalent. It is described as “the first ‘territory’ that can offer identity, stimulation and safety for one’s own existence” and can only be found “within the trinity of community, space and tradition; because only there human desires for identity, safety and an active designing of life can be pleased.” I think that the only humans who ever truly experienced heimat are Adam and Eve in the garden of Eden, that perfect place designed by God for his creation. Only in that space was a perfect trinity possible. In a broken world something always disrupts the trinity of community, space and tradition.

Our entire lives can be taken up with the quest for home, the longing for home. And yet, once we think we have found it, something interferes with the perfect trinity we think we have and we find there is something more.

Something is always leading us home. I thought about this as I watched my mom enter her final journey this past fall. Her yearning for home was both spoken and unspoken, a longing fulfilled on a cold November night as her breath stopped, and she entered eternity.

My mom’s longings find an echo in my own heart and soul, a poignant reminder that throughout life’s transitions, moves, stages, and travels something perennially leads us home, not to a physical shelter but to a place of secure identity and complete belonging. My inward sigh is replaced by the deep comfort of knowing that this longing is woven throughout the human story, ultimately guiding us toward that place where the trinity of community, space, and tradition are perfectly restored in the presence of God.

Finding Place

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The city of Boston is ushering in the day, traffic winding its way through the labyrinth of streets and tunnels that make up the city. To the left of the Bunker Hill Monument, the sun rises over the Atlantic Ocean, shades of pink, orange, yellow, and red casting joyful reflections on steel and glass plated buildings. Snow is on the rooftops, a bright white contrasting with the colors of sunrise.

I know these streets and I know this neighborhood. It may seem odd to say this with the sort of pride I feel, but knowing these streets is a hard-earned achievement. I’ve lived here for four years, and this section of Boston has become home. I know its rhythm, the bells tolling on the hour at Saint Francis de Sales Parish across the street with Christmas Carols during Christmas Tide, Easter hymns during Easter, and God Bless America and Amazing Grace in between. I know the schedule of the 93 bus as it stops outside our house throughout the day, its automated “Route 93 service to downtown Boston,” echoing in the early morning hours. Best of all, I know all of my neighbors and some of their extended families. We are sometimes known as the Clarken Court Troublemakers Guild, a title I couldn’t be prouder to belong to.

Those of us who have lived in multiple countries and places are keenly aware that discovering and learning to find your way through streets, alleys, buildings, and businesses in your neighborhood is a wonderful thing. To turn right or left, knowing that even if you take a wrong turn, you can find your way back to the road you were on is an accomplishment worthy of recognizing. It’s all about finding place.

Perhaps also this is the first step in learning to love a place – knowing its streets and buildings, becoming familiar with the tempo of the place, what makes it move and live, what gives it life and personality. Knowing that if you get lost or take a wrong turn, you can always find your way back home.

Finding place isn’t always about instant love. More often, it’s about living life day in and day out, living through the things that make you want to give up and the things that make you want to live forever. Knowing that you can point someplace and say things like “I remember when we went there! We were with so and so and we laughed so hard we couldn’t breathe!” “That restaurant closed? That is so sad! We loved that place.” “Remember when the Martinelli family lived there? It was such a happy house!”

And then one day, when you least expect it, you realize that you’ve found a place, a place for you. A place that you have learned to love, and it has loved you back. You know it is not permanent, for nothing ever is, but that doesn’t stop you from settling and calling it home. With some fear and hesitancy, you hang your heart and as you hang it, you breathe a sigh of wistful longing and settled peace. Your global soul has found another place to call home.

Identity as Performance or Participation

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September in the Northeast is a month of warm days, cooler nights, and the lingering magic of summer. The last several evenings we have spent at the ocean, taking long walks during low tide, reveling in the wide-open expanse of beach where those of us fortunate enough, get to stay far longer and later than tourists who have left for homes farther away. It is glorious. There is no other word for the beauty, the rhythmic sound of waves against the rocks and sand, and the light and shadows dancing across the ocean front. “We are so fortunate,” we keep on saying to each other and to strangers with whom we exchange a few words before continuing on our way.

During these last restful, stress-free days I’ve thought a lot about identity. This is not something that would surprise any of you who are familiar with my writing. Identity and belonging and processing those two big ideas and concepts and how they work themselves out in our everyday lives have been a huge part of my child and adulthood. The lonely privilege of living between creates an identity crisis at different points in life, where you struggle to know who you are, and to where and whom you belong. As I’ve written publicly, I have met many others who are on the same journey. Since early in life, many of us have been exposed to diverse cultures and languages; to many different patterns of living and ways of being in the world. Along with this, we live in a world where it is possible to spend a large amount of time curating and cultivating an image for public consumption – performing for a crowd of strangers as it were.

I was recently listening to a talk given by Jonathan Pageau called The Role of Art in Identity. The talk was given at Princeton Theological Seminary for a conference hosted by the Scala Foundation. If you are not familiar with either Pageau or with the Scala Foundation, they are well worth checking out through following the links. They are not, however, the focus of my thoughts here, rather they are the inspiration for wanting to think about identity in this way.

There were many points made by Pageau in the talk, but what stood out to me in particular was the idea that identity and art can be either about performance or participation. This point hit me deeply and I’m searching to figure out why. As I search, I think I am finding some answers. As I listened to the talk, for the first time I felt I had words to describe my discomfort in curating a public image in the way that social media pressures us to do. Too often it is all about performance. Instead of being able to participate in connection and conversation, there is a pressure to perform with the performance directed at people who are strangers, people I don’t know who I subconsciously want to impress. When I fall prey to this, I act and write in ways that are inconsistent with who I profess to be, inconsistent with the loves I have and the values I claim to hold dear. Just writing it makes me see the craziness of it, and yet I don’t think I’m alone in this identity as performance problem.

As I contrast different forms of social media and the pressure I may feel to conform to them, I also search for places where I know my identity is not about performance. One such place is in my Orthodox community where the focus is on the Eucharist and our striving towards Christ and another is here, on this blog.

Early on I think I had conflicting motivations about writing. On the one hand I wanted to become a better writer and to participate in life with others through my words. On the other hand, I found myself drawn to performance, drawn to getting attention through this medium. But at some point, my writing changed. It changed slowly, imperceptibly, but profoundly. It became about the connections I was making. It became about the emails that I received from strangers and friends telling me that they knew exactly what I was talking about. That I had put into words that which they were feeling.

What a profound privilege! Almost every time I wrote, I would hear from someone whose heart resonated with what I was writing. The words and descriptions that I used to convey what I was thinking and feeling became avenues of connection.

This has continued through my writing process. Instead of being left with the hollow reward of likes and shares, I am continually offered an invitation to hear the heart of someone who has read and relates with my words. I contrast that beautiful sense of connection to other times when I am glued to social media and envy floods my soul because someone (often a stranger) I follow is performing better than I am. Someone got a book deal that has me filled with jealousy. Someone is gaining followers and accolades, and I am left wanting. And this I know: Performance will always leave me wanting.

Identity then can be a way of experiencing continuity and community, or it can be fragmented, exposed and vulnerable to whatever performance is popular at the moment. If my identity is about performance, then it changes by the day, sometimes by the minute, depending on who I want to please and on what I desire. The opposite of that comes when I see my identity connected to my interactions with others and my participation within a community. In other words – identity as participation.

Maybe that is why so many third culture kids who are raised in cultures where value is placed on community and collectivist thinking find it difficult to adjust to their passport countries where their identities are suddenly reduced to something as boring as their individual likes and dislikes, desires and wants. But that loaded topic is for another day!

I know I will be thinking (and perhaps writing) more about identity as participation, but for now I am grateful to be in a place where I know what performance looks like because I have experienced the opposite. For I have discovered great peace through writing, and through connection to my faith community and my Creator. I am growing to love the author of my story far more than the story itself, and that is making all the difference.

What about you? Have you ever thought of identity as being about performance or participation? I would love to hear from you in this space or through messages!

Pakistan Independence Day

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Happy Birthday Pakistan! In honor of Pakistan’s 76th Birthday. Founded in 1947, Pakistan has a colorful, well-storied history. It is also a country deeply misunderstood on the world stage. In honor of the country that raised me, I’ve included an excerpt from my second book. Enjoy!

“I learned early on of the beauty and hospitality of Pakistan. My eyes captured landscapes that the best photographers in the world could not capture, and the music and colors are etched on my mind. I was welcomed into homes and churches, played in courtyards and on canal banks.

In my childhood, the Pakistan I knew was a place of color and life: bright oranges, reds, yellows, and greens of spices and fabrics. I knew the ready invitations to come for tea that brought smiles to my face and delight to my heart. I knew the best food in the world – mouthwatering and piping hot pakoras; kebabs purchased in the middle of the bazaar in the afternoon; spicy, red-orange, charred chicken tikka with naan and fresh lemon; the cold tang of lemon squash; and chicken masala’s thick, onion-filled sauce that made my nose run through an entire meal. The tastes and spices lingered long after the meal was over.

I knew Pakistan as a place of food, music, colors, and laughter. This was my home, the setting of my earliest memories, my first steps, my first kiss, my first love. I literally cut my first teeth in this land. Pakistan was a place of life and faith. I was surrounded by Pakistanis who loved me and put up with the immaturity of my childhood. This was where my physical and faith journey began. Would I ever love another place so much? I didn’t think so. Later, I would come to know the complexity and contradiction that defined this homeland that had adopted me, but in early years I knew only the good.

I would later discover more of her history. I would learn of a Pakistan birthed in violence and tragedy, a land that continues to face crisis after crisis – some at the hands of other governments, and some of its own making. I would learn of the difficulty of a country that struggled to find her identity apart from the larger Indian subcontinent. I would see the struggles in my friends around marriage and family and learn of the massive disparities between the wealthy and the poor.

Later I would learn that in addition to the beauty of friendship and hospitality there was also the horror of violent fundamentalism. I would be introduced to and angered by the one-dimensional Pakistan of Western perception and media. I would understand that alongside stunning landscapes of high mountains and clear lakes was the dirt and raw sewage of cities. I would later face disease, high infant morbidity and mortality, inescapable poverty, and the light hair and big bellies of malnutrition. I would grow to see many dimensions of this beautiful, complex land. But the Pakistan of early childhood was a beautiful home, and I loved that home.”

Excerpt from Worlds Apart- A Third Culture Kid’s Journey. Available wherever books are sold.

Saturday Musings on a Sunday Afternoon

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I’m deep in Saturday musings at a coffee shop, wondering what I’m doing coming on a Saturday, that time when tourists flock to the two coffee shops that Rockport has to serve thousands of customers. From one point of view, it is a depressing look at our society. Crowds waiting in a line that stretches out the door for coffee, food, donuts, and Norwegian coffee bread. I learned they are out of the Norwegian coffee bread some time ago. Since that time, every customer has wanted it and every customer has been disappointed. In their defense, everyone is patient. They are mostly on vacation and there are no emails to write, meetings to attend, or deals to broker.

I think perhaps I’m the depressing one – perhaps I’m the one who, alone, waits in line deeply envious of the groups that are here, wishing I was in one of them as I have been so many times before. Instead, I’m alone – my kids all over the world busy with lives that have their own joys and complications. Perhaps I’m the only one that feels the overwhelming sense of consumerism and the great American pastime of waiting in lines, whether it be in late July in a tourist town or on Black Friday at a Walmart. Perhaps I’m the only one in the coffee shop who feels the loneliness that one sometimes feels in a crowd.

Experience tells me I am wrong about being the only one. My head knows that inside every coffee shop or other public space there are the lonely, the angry, the happy, the disappointed, and the apathetic. Amidst the crowds of happy vacation goers, I am not alone in this place. That’s what my head says. I will it to go from my head to my heart. In truth, I’m not in a great place. I’m angry at small things, I am restless, I want to run oh so far away. I want to know that my life will get better. I am off track spiritually, physically, and emotionally. The only thing going well is my work.

When I was younger, I would blame these times of being off track on my “between worlds” status. How could I possibly be on track when I was living so far from where I belonged? Like so many of us, I learned the hard way that you can be in your favorite place on earth and still get completely off track. You can lose your physical and metaphorical way anywhere in the world.

How does one “get back on track?” How does one move through the world in gracious acceptance and gratitude when one is off track? Even as I write this, I know there are many good examples of this. There are so many who walk tall, accepting each day as it comes despite pain, sorrow, difficult circumstances and more.

Part of it is just discipline and pressing forward. So much of this is a choice. Choosing acceptance. Choosing good. Choosing hope. Choosing to walk in faith.

Today I have a choice. I choose to walk tall. I choose to relax when I can, to rest when I can, to seek help when I need, to breathe in ocean air and walk on sandy beaches or navigate busy city streets and impatient drivers, to take in blue sky and a horizon that stretches to infinity or a horizon that stretches to the next building, to read the Gospel lesson of the day, to pray in faith that there is one who listens, to read and listen to words of others that remind me of a world beyond this. A world beyond trauma and pain, a world beyond tears and bruises, a world beyond conflict and wars, a world beyond restless longing and anger at the small things, a world beyond huge crowds in small coffee shops on a Saturday morning. A world beyond, where tears are captured in a bottle and then they will be no more.

Longing for Places Beyond

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Ahwatukee is an area of Phoenix that backs up to South Mountain. Some jokingly call it the “world’s largest cul-de-sac,” and they aren’t wrong. If you get lost in the depths of Ahwatukee on a street with the word “desert” in the name, you could drive around for hours. Large cul-de-sac aside, it is a beautiful area of Phoenix. Rose and clay-colored homes back up to hillsides and large bushes of fuchsia, coral, and red bougainvillea provide bright pops of color.

We lived in Ahwatukee during our years in Phoenix and it was a good place for us. We left the cold of the Northeast behind us for a few years, trading hot tea in winter months for cold smoothies, and boots for sandals most of the year.

One way of getting to our house was by way of a hill. The top of the hill provided breathtaking views of the valley below. While daytime views were beautiful, it was that time of twilight, when the sun is setting and all the world is magic, that offered beyond this world beauty. It was indescribable. Fiery shades of coral, purple, red, blue, green, and yellow brought colors of an ever-present Phoenix sun going down and making its way to the other side of the world. I would always hope that a car was not behind me while I was driving so that I could take extra minutes to inhale the view and all the feelings it evoked. I longed for that feeling to continue as I drove away, even as I knew it couldn’t, knew that all would grow dim as darkness consumed the fiery beauty.

While longing is a good adjective for what I felt during those moments, it didn’t, and it doesn’t describe the depth of my feeling. It was this week that I discovered a word that gives an explosion to the longing I would feel in those moments. It’s a much-needed word in a world where our own language so often fails us. The word is “sehnsucht” – a German noun loosely translated as longing, desire, yearning or craving. One writer described it as an “inconsolable yearning or wistful longing for something one cannot explain or does not know.” The word is also used to mean thoughts and feelings about life or experiences that are incomplete while what is longed for is an experience that one can hold on to, one that will last forever. This, then, is what I experienced during those moments on the hilltop.

As often happens when I discover a word, I began to see this word everywhere. From articles to books, I found others who wrote about and experienced this reality.

If saudade is one of the perfect words for third culture kids to give voice to their experiences and longings, then sehnsucht is another. Saudade emphasizes the longing for what no longer exists. We experienced something and long for it, even as we know it doesn’t and cannot still exist. The people are gone, and the places have changed. Nostalgia is another word where the Greek words of return and suffering combine to create a word that has the essence of suffering caused by an unappeased yearning to return. As we come to peace with our saudade and our nostalgia, sehnsucht emerges as a word that brings life to the indescribable longing that we feel within and outside of our passport countries, a yearning for places beyond our current reality, for places we’ve actually never been and that don’t exist on this earth.

Author CS Lewis seems to understand this when he writes “Apparently, then, our lifelong nostalgia, our longing to be reunited with something in the universe from which we now feel cut off, to be on the inside of some door which we have always seen from the outside, is no mere neurotic fancy, but the truest index of our real situation. And to be at last summoned inside would be both glory and honour beyond all our merits and also the healing of that old ache.” [The Weight of Glory]

Many might feel sadness that “inconsolable yearning” is at the heart of this word. I do not. I see this as a window to my faith; an understanding that the only thing that will ever console my ultimate longing is eternity. Of all the beautiful sunsets I will ever see or experience, an eternity with the creator of the sunsets is the only thing that can satisfy this yearning.

These things—the beauty, the memory of our own past—are good images of what we really desire; but if they are mistaken for the thing itself they turn into dumb idols, breaking the hearts of their worshipers. For they are not the thing itself; they are only the scent of a flower we have not found, the echo of a tune we have not heard, news from a country we have never visited.”

CS Lewis in The Weight of Glory

I have decided that far worse than the longing or the sehnsucht would be its absence. Indeed, its absence would be a type of hell, breaking us off from contact with an ever-present God who delights to surprise his children with glimpses of glory, embedding in us a longing that can only be satisfied in an eternity beyond.

 

Paschal Reflections – Deeper Magic

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This week has been Holy Week for millions around the world who are part of the Orthodox Church. It is the final week before we celebrate Pascha and the world changing resurrection of Christ.

It is my custom to write a reflection before Pascha. Our service begins at midnight, but we generally try and arrive by 11pm to get a seat. We enter into the nave in darkness with only a few candles burning and someone chanting the Psalms. Just before midnight, the bells begin to ring, and the room goes completely dark. At midnight, our priests begin to chant “Thy Resurrection, O Christ Our Savior, the Angels in Heaven sing. Enable us on Earth to Glorify Thee in Purity of Heart.” The senior priest then comes out, a candle in hand and says “Come! Receive the light!” The people surge to the front, candles in hand, and receive the light either from the priest or from each other. It is glorious! It gets even better, but I’ve described this before in this space, so I won’t go into detail other than to say that there is an enormous amount of joy, hundreds of “Christ is Risens” in every language that is present in our parish, and it all ends with a huge feast at 4am.

So now, at 7 pm with several hours to go, I enter my reflective space.

During these last weeks of Lent, I have been listening to the audio version of the Narnia series – specifically The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe and The Horse and His Boy.

My connection to Narnia started in childhood when my mom would read to us during the evenings when we were on vacation from boarding school. Dressed in pajamas and curled comfortably in the living room or on my parents’ bed we would listen to tales of an enchantress, winter, and a lion who was not safe but was good. We heard stories of talking horses and boys turned into dragons, of Puddleglum and a giant mouse called Reepicheep, and finally of a poor donkey manipulated by an evil and cunning ape into dressing as a lion and a final battle that opened the door to a new world “farther up and farther in.” These stories captured my imagination, and I would dream of doors in our world that led to worlds beyond like Narnia.

As a teenager and then adult, I began reading the series on my own, never growing tired of the stories and metaphors, the word pictures and wisdom that the Narnia series offered.

As I have listened to this during Holy Week, the author’s brilliance in capturing this timeless story has struck me anew. It has been profound to listen to this during this time of the year.

On this eve before Pascha, I think about the climactic event from The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, where Aslan, innocent of any wrongdoing, took on the punishment of Edmund, and was brutally killed at the hand of the White Witch.

But that wasn’t the true climax or the end of the story. The story was bigger, deeper, and more powerful than the White Witch could ever know. And the gift of understanding this was first given to Susan and Lucy by Aslan as he conquered death.

Consider these words:

At that moment they heard from behind them a loud noise—a great cracking, deafening noise as if a giant had broken a giant’s plate…. The Stone Table was broken into two pieces by a great crack that ran down it from end to end; and there was no Aslan.

“Who’s done it?” cried Susan. “What does it mean? Is it more magic?”

“Yes!” said a great voice from behind their backs. “It is more magic.” They looked round. There, shining in the sunrise, larger than they had seen him before, shaking his mane (for it had apparently grown again) stood Aslan himself.

“Oh, Aslan!” cried both the children, staring up at him, almost as much frightened as they were glad….

“But what does it all mean?” asked Susan when they were somewhat calmer.

“It means,” said Aslan, “that though the Witch knew the Deep Magic, there is a magic deeper still which she did not know. Her knowledge goes back only to the dawn of time. But if she could have looked a little further back, into the stillness and the darkness before Time dawned, she would have read there a different incantation. She would have known that when a willing victim who had committed no treachery was killed in a traitor’s stead, the Table would crack and Death itself would start working backward.”

The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe by C.S. Lewis

“There is a magic deeper still”,,, I don’t for a moment believe that my faith is magic, but I do believe in my deepest soul that there is a mystery so big and so deep that I will never fully understand it in this life, that the greatest love imaginable in heaven or on earth has been given to us through the Resurrection. I do believe that before time dawned Christ “the only begotten Son of God, begotten of the Father before all ages” the Redeemer knew what was to be. This is one of the glories of Pascha, that I get to both experience and bear witness to a collective, community gathering of celebration, entering into the timeless truth of Christ’s resurrection and what it means for the human race.

“Looking back into the stillness and darkness before Time dawned…” As I enter into the wee hours of the morning, I will once again reflect on this mystery and what it means for me and millions of others around the globe.

And with that, I will say:

Xristos Anesti! Χριστός ανέστη
المسيح قام Al Masih Qam
Khristos Voskres!
Hristos a Inviat!
Christo Ressuscitou!
Christ is Risen!

Indeed, He is Risen!

Image – Coptic Cairo, 2016