Don't Mess with Ches

As I continue to wrestle and try to wrap my mind around such big issues and struggles that most Africans face everyday, I continually find peace and wisdom. As I’ve mentioned before, it’s many times hard for me to understand this faith-healing thing.
As a logic-seeking westerner I think that the answer to such big questions is out there. I continue to read through a book called a Generous Orthodoxy, which is quite mystical in and of itself because it was written by Brian McLaren, a friend of Edward’s who actually sat in this very spot on the couch that I write this blog entry. I was recently reading a chapter entitled Why I am Mystical/Poetic. He includes a passage from G.K. Chesterton’s Orthodoxy. It reads:

"Imagination does not breed insanity. Exactly what does breed insanity is reason. Poets do not go mad; but chess players do…Perhaps the strongest case of all is this: that only one great English poet went mad, Cowper. And he was definitely driven mad by logic, by the ugly and alien logic of predestination. Poetry was not the disease, but the medicine…He was damned by John Calvin…Poetry is sane because it floats easily in an infinite sea; reason seeks to cross the infinite sea, and so make it finite. The result is mental exhaustion…The poet only asks to get his head into the heavens. It is the logician who seeks to get the heavens into his head. And it is his head that splits…The madman is not the man who has lost his reason. The madman is the man who has lost everything except his reason…Materialists and madmen never have doubts…Mysticism keeps men sane. As long as you have the mystery you have health; when you destroy mystery you create morbidity (12-13, 15, 21, 24)."

I hope and I pray that my faith continues to expand past what can be explained, what can be rationalized. I encourage my brothers and sisters who are also in this violent sea of trying to find logic in everything to ease their paddling and find peace on the waters of the mystical. For me at least, once I slow my paddling (and hopefully I’ll come to a stop at some point) I can start to look around and see all the beauty, all the wonder.

….I apologize that my entries continue to come slowly. I did treasure sleep a bit more than usual this week and also had my first run in with a bit of a health issue, a minor eye infection. All is well now though.
This week has been the best by far. As I continue to deny myself and be fully present in the ministering and the loving that is going on, I experience God’s wonder in an unexplainable manner.

This week I think I’m going to start some Kiswahili tutoring and also will get to start writing some reports and profiles on the HIV support groups. I’m sure it will be a bit different than Rent.

May you discover God’s wonder and his glory in that that cannot be explained.

-benya