Silence.
Silence and solitude were my companions in the closing months of 2011. How I hated them. How I deeply long for their companionship once again. Companions on the journey, signposts along the path. Silence and solitude. The voice of God in those liminal days – the days between what was and what might yet be.
In mid-October 2011, we moved. With very little notice, we picked up and moved across the vast expanse of Canadian geography from Ottawa to Vancouver. Not only were we leaving sub-zero winters in favour of living in a permanent raincloud, but we would also be leaving our friends, our community, and our home of the past three-and-a-half years.
We had to say goodbye to all of the things that had rooted us so deeply in place.
There’s something humbling about entering a new city. A new place. I don’t know how it is for you, but it seems to me that there’s something about displacement—cultural, geographical, environmental—that necessitates both humility and attentiveness.
I think the two go hand in hand.
Humility can only come when we’re paying attention. Paying attention to the land on which we walk, the people with whom we’re in relationship. Asking the question, “where is God in all of this?”
And so it is as we turn another page in the unfolding story of Word Made Flesh Canada.
What began as a dream in a set of conversations several years ago is now taking on flesh. From conversations at Prem Dan in Kolkata to encounters at conferences and shared meals, our community is being birthed out of a deep network of relationships that continue to bind us all together in Christ’s love.
I was reminded of the connection between humility and attentiveness within my first few weeks of arriving in Vancouver. It was a conference organized by a number of local Christian groups on the subject of homelessness. During a coffee break, I met a man who, in community with others, had been living and serving in Vancouver’s Downtown East Side (DTES)1 for over 20 years.
He asked about the work I was doing, and what brought me to Vancouver. I shared some of the dreams and visions for WMFC. I told him about the hope of, over time, calling together a Canadian community to live out and support the mission of Word Made Flesh at home and abroad. He looked at me, half-smiled, and demanded to know why we were starting something new, at this time and in this place.
Hidden in his question, I later came to realize, was the frustration of seeing so many young men and women coming to the neighbourhood with the desire to ‘fix its problems.’ They’d come, stay a short time, and pick up and leave when the going got tough, when these so-called problems were not immediately fixed.
He was right to be concerned. And he was right to ask me such pointed questions. What this city, and what these communities do not need are more cause-hungry idealists.
What we need are men and women with the attentiveness to read the situation, to listen to and learn from those who have been in these places for years, even decades before us. To listen and learn from those with and amongst whom we seek to serve. And each of us requires the humility before God and one another to admit how incomplete our perspective, how incomplete our plans to fix the world’s problems simply are.
The Cry for Humility hits me close to home, because I know how necessary humility is in our ministry – no matter where God has placed us. Over the past decade, God has imprinted these verses from Jeremiah’s prophecy on my heart:
Build houses and live in them; plant gardens and eat what they produce…Seek the welfare of the city where I have sent you into exile, and pray to the Lord on its behalf, for in its welfare you will find your welfare (Jeremiah 29:5-7)
Build houses. Plant Gardens. Love everyone.
In all humility—the humility of exile and the humility of a new city—be attentive. Be attentive to God in prayer. Be attentive to the people amongst whom you live—those people in that place God has sent you to serve.
We have all been sent. Whether it’s Lima, Peru, Vancouver BC, or Tucson Arizona. I pray that no matter where God has called you, you will seek to serve God’s world with humility and attentiveness.