2013:7 - And the Holy Spirit will come upon you ...

Yesterday someone asked me via Facebook if I could explain what is about Egypt that keeps me returning.  

The unfolding of my morning gives a glimpse of what it is about Egypt that keeps me coming back.  

My alarm went off at 5:30. I had to get up early to prepare for an online conversation with a colleague on the West Coast at 6:00 in order to be ready for a meeting in Chicago that will happen right after I return from Egypt. By the time my conversation was finished, I was running late so I skipped my morning shower, dressed quickly and prepared myself for the morning. I started a load of laundry since my 10 attempts over the weekend to do laundry were each met with a occupied washing machine (and if I don’t start it first thing in the morning, it’s likely that there will not be water again until after sundown and by that time another student will occupy the washing machine) and then I went to chapel with only a couple of minutes to center myself before we began morning prayer.

When I sat down in chapel the student who I was expecting to preach was seated across from me studying his homily. He approached me and asked for help in pronouncing a few words and then he told me he didn’t think he was preaching until tomorrow. I tried to ask if he was ready to preach this morning and he said that he would, but he had written down the 25^th(tomorrow). I thought that perhaps I had given him the wrong date and at that moment we began morning prayer and so we were both occupied with the appointed psalms.

As we prayed I worried about the student now sitting next to me. I know how hard it is to preach in any language to say nothing of preaching in a foreign language. I have so much respect for my students that they are willing to be vulnerable in front of their priests, teachers and classmates and I want them to feel confident and prepared when they stand up to proclaim the Word with their words. So as morning prayer ended I leaned over to my student and said, “I want you to feel confident when you preach and I think you are not ready today. I will preach today and you will preach tomorrow.” He was grateful and I frantically started searching through Luke’s gospel for text to use as the basis of a very brief homily.

I chose Luke 6:12-19 where Jesus calls 12 of his disciples to be apostles. As mass began I prayed for the power of the Spirit and trusted that something would come. At the time of the gospel, I stood to read it and then stood in front of the chapel and prayed and preached. I said something like this:

Holy Spirit come and fill my words with your truth and fill our hearts with understanding to know Christ’s love, his mercy, his grace and his forgiveness today and always. Amen.

I am not dressed like a pastor today because I did not think I would preach. But there has been some confusion about who would preach today and so I will speak a few words about the gospel.

When I first began seminary I was the kind of person who needed a lot of order in my life. I always wanted to be prepared for what would come next. I wanted to know what my next step would be and the step after that and the step after that and the step after that. It didn’t take me very long to realize that something would need to change if I was going to be a pastor in Christ’s church.

One of the things that we see about Jesus in the gospels is that he is always listening to the people who call for him. He is always seeing the people who need help. He is always willing to stop what he is doing and make room for someone who needs him.

I could be a pastor who always needs to know the next step, but I would not be a very good pastor or be a pastor very long if I couldn’t be open to listening and seeing and noticing like Jesus. Many days I begin with a list of things that I want to get done. But if someone comes to me and says, “Pastor Amy I need your help with a problem” she will not want to hear me say, “I’m sorry could you come back tomorrow, I’m very busy today.”

Jesus called many different kinds of people to be his apostles because Jesus needs many different kinds of people to proclaim his word. But one thing that he taught the apostles as they followed him was that they would have to be able to make room for the people who wanted to reach Jesus.

We are all called to be disciples of Christ and as his disciples we are called to do ministry in his image. This means that we must also learn to listen like Jesus, and to see like Jesus and to notice the needs of people around us like Jesus. But Jesus doesn’t ask us to do this all by ourselves. He promises to be with us and he has given us his Spirit to give us strength and power to do what we must do. And so when someone comes to us and needs our help and we don’t know how to help, we can pray to the Holy Spirit and trust Jesus promise that this Spirit will give us the power and the ability to do what Christ needs us to do.

By 8:30 I was at breakfast eating my morning portion of ful. As I reflected on what happened between 5:30 and 8:30 this morning I realized that this is a piece of why I keep coming back.

The truth is that I am still a person who likes a plan, a to-do list, an agenda, a schedule. I don’t do very well with interruptions and I’m not my most comfortable when I’m working on the fly. But I also know and believe with all of my heart that in the vulnerable places of my life, when I am out of my comfort zone, when I am forced to address the events that unfold before my eyes, when I arrive late and hot to church on Monday morning and realize that I have to stand up and proclaim Christ without any prior preparation, in those moments I am more open to the power of the Holy Spirit than I am at any other moment in my life. In those moments, I trust more in who I am as a Child of God and an heir with Christ to God’s promises than I do at any other time. In Egypt each year I am forced to practice my faith in the power of God to lead, guide and protect and keep me more than I need to in the comfort of my home and my usual routines. I keep coming to Egypt because each day when I am here my life becomes a living confession that it is not I who live, but Christ Jesus and his Spirit who lives in me.

You can’t learn this, you must simply experience it. And in Egypt I experience this more than anyplace else in my life … and for this I’m grateful. This is the experience that keeps me coming back.

2013:6 - Precisely

Egypt is often described as a “Mediterranean” culture, which is short-hand for relaxed and laid back when it comes to time. In a recent class a student asked me what “precisely” means and in explaining the word I gave this example: in America when a meeting is schedule for 3:00 pm it usually begins precisely at 3. In Egypt if a meeting is scheduled for 3:00 pm it may begin at 3:00 or 3:30 or 4:00 or 7:00 or tomorrow. The students laughed and now when I use the word “precisely” they understand.

In general I’m a precise kind of person. At home I am unhappy if a meeting scheduled for 3:00 doesn’t actually start until 3:10. But I learned long ago that if I was going to survive in this environment I would have to learn to practice more patience. In general I do pretty well.

Today (because I couldn’t handle rice at yet another lunch) I decided to have lunch at an Italian pizza place on Road 9. I don’t think anyone would ever call the wait staff at this restaurant “attentive” but the food is good, the air conditioning is not set too cold, and when you’re tired of rice, rice and more rice, pizza with cheese seems like an exotic alternative. As I was finishing my meal an English-speaking man entered the restaurant. I didn’t hear him well, but I’m guessing he was American. He asked for a place to sit and planted himself at a table for 6. When the menu didn’t appear within 3 minutes, he went searching for a waiter to give him one and when that waiter did not come to take his order within 3 minutes of getting the menu, he looked around, got up and walked out of the restaurant.

In this laid back and relaxed environment (especially when it’s 97 degrees outside) I’ve been trying to imagine where he ended up going where he could receive better and faster service. As for me, I enjoyed my Sicilian pizza with eggplant and cheese … and no rice!

2013:5 - New Words

Yesterday at lunch there was quite the conversation going back and forth between Atef and Sameh. The seminarians were scheduled to play football (soccer) after study hall and there’s nothing that spurs more conversation at the seminary than football. Sameh is the leader of sports for the summer course and since his team has won every game so far I’ve been joking with him that he’s stacked the teams in his favor and is paying the referee a little something on the side. Atef and Sameh are two of the best players and are on the same team but yesterday Atef said he would play for the other team.

At lunch they sat at opposite ends of the table with me in the middle and traded insults about the other’s lack of skills and lack of teamwork. As I listened back and forth I taught them a new phrase: “talking smack” and gave them multiple examples of how talking smack happens in my parents house to this day among my siblings.

Atef loves his new phrase!

2013:4 - On my trip to Fayoum . . .

 Friday afternoon our 17 seminarians, two priests, three nuns and my colleague Rita and I traveled to Fayoum by bus for a mass celebrating the taking on of priestly garments by a former student of the summer course. Egyptians call the black garment a soutane. We know it in English as a cassock and by the beginning of the second year of theology studies, the deacons at the seminary must begin to wear this garment. Near as I can tell it’s one of the symbolic gestures of assuming the role of a priest and preparing oneself for ordination.

The pictures on my Amy in Egypt Facebook page give you a sense of our cozy, two-hour bus ride there and back and also the mass we celebrated. Along the way we drove through Giza so got to see the pyramids on the Giza plain with the city encroaching from three sides. They are like mountains rising out of the floor of the desert and they never cease to amaze me.  

The Coptic Catholic Mass we celebrated was largely sung and lasted over 90 minutes. The seminarians served as the choir for the mass and lead the singing of the congregation. They all processed in wearing their white albs embroidered with red and gold. Maybe 10 priests and deacons stood around the altar throughout the service and shared leadership of the service.

The language of the mass is in a combination of Coptic (the ancient language of Egypt that has it’s roots in pharonic times) and Arabic. I heard some familiar words, recognized songs and was generally able to follow along with the flow because I’m familiar with the English translation of the mass that we do each morning of the summer course in it’s most simplified form.

If you’ve ever experience worship in an Orthodox church you understand the sensory richness of what I experienced on Friday night. Every sense was engaged as we heard music that mimics chant but carries a different tonal quality, we saw icons and images of saints and disciples covering the iconostasis, we inhaled the smoke from incense that was spread over us four separate times during the mass, and ate bread and wine. The mass was filled with symbols and imagery that I have only begun to notice and understand. But as Abuna Bishoi explained to me every movement, every action has a meaning and altogether it is a rich feast!

But of everything that I experienced in worship on Friday, my favorite moment might have been watching Fady’s mother, who was seated across from me, when he put on the cassock and turned to face the parish. The face of a proud mama transcends culture and was maybe the most beautiful thing I saw in Fayoum.

2013:3 - Up and Out

Some of you may remember the blog that I wrote about my student, Wa'el, 3 years ago (below). Wa'el is the student who preached a sermon to me one day when I declared, "I must preach. When Jesus go up, he send Holy Spirit. . . I will preach. The Holy Spirit here."

Tomorrow we will celebrate the Feast of Ascension. I will again preach during morning mass. Wa'el has given me the best illustration I could use for the day. Ascension is all about Jesus going up so we can be sent out.

From 2010:

Wael is a student who is new to seminary this year and new to English as well. Like Atef, he is in my Level 1 class. Wael’s English is difficult to understand – he struggles with basic grammar, his vocabulary is quite limited, and yet he wants so much to learn and to communicate. Sometimes when I am explaining something in class I’m certain that he has no idea what I’m saying. And yet at other times he surprises me with what comes out of his mouth.

On Saturday as a reward for their very hard work so far, I showed a short DVD to the students in Level I about prayer. After the video we had a discussion. It was difficult because while they have many ideas, they struggle to find the words and grammar in English to communicate. In the course of the conversation I noticed Wael take out a piece of paper at one point and scribble some words At the next lull in the conversation he spoke two relatively clear sentences about his ideas about prayer. It was amazing.

At the end of study hall on Monday Wael surprised me again. For the last week the more advanced students have been offering homilies in English in the daily mass. This is one of the things that I work with them on each year. They’ve done very well. Wael said to me, “Pastor Amy I want . . . no I NEED to preach in mass. Next week I preach?”

“Wael if you work on your English very hard in the year ahead maybe next year you will be ready to prepare a homily.”

“No. I must do.”

“Wael preaching is very, very difficult. You must know grammar and you must know vocabulary and you must know correct pronunciation and you must be able to put your ideas from Arabic into English that is clear. This is very very hard.”

“No. When Jesus go up, he send Holy Spirit. Holy Spirit send apostles to all nations and use all languages. I will preach. The Holy Spirit here.”

The conversation continued for some time. The truth is that Wael is not ready to prepare a homily in English just yet. He has a lot to learn. Through their hard work, his brothers in Level 4 have made it look easy and Wael and other students want to try as well. What Wael doesn’t know is that he preached a sermon for me today.

“I must preach. When Jesus go up, he send Holy Spirit. . . . I will preach. The Holy Spirit here.” 

This is good news indeed spoken to me by a young man who doesn’t know the proper usage of the verb “to be” but who trusts with all his heart that the Holy Spirit has been sent to him to preach the good news of Jesus to his brothers and sisters in Christ. He has every confidence the Holy Spirit will use his broken English. Oh to have such confidence, such determination, and such faith!

Thanks be to God!

2013:2 - Thy Kingdom Come

Sunday morning after my breakfast I walked along Road 9 to do some shopping. As I walked along a familiar stretch of sidewalk a young boy, maybe 12 years old, sat on the edge of the sidewalk and watched me approach. As I walked by he spoke, just loud enough for me to hear, “Go to hell. Go to hell. Go to hell. Go to hell ...”

I was not threatened. He was not going to hurt me. I am not in an unsafe situation. More than anything his words were heartbreaking. I have always known and experienced Egyptians as the kindest and most hospitable people. For years I have been welcomed by friends and strangers wherever I go. I have been protected and guided by strangers as I’ve tried to cross the road through Cairo’s infamous traffic. On the Metro, strangers have greeted me and invited me to dinner at their home. The words of this boy were a stark reminder of how much things have changed in Egypt in just two years.

His was a voice of pure contempt. This was a quiet cry of a child longing for justice in a country that has become even more unjust and more inhospitable to its own people. The curse of a boy to a passing stranger was a cry for the Christ’s blessed kingdom to be known in this place. This boy saw me as he would see any of you, as one of the powerful who benefits from this injustice and seeks to keep hold of the power and wealth that we have.

Every year when I come to Egypt I am reminded of just how unfair this world is. As an American, I have been given abundant opportunities, a good education, the freedom to study where I want and learn anything I choose. I can work and earn a living that allows me to travel, to live in a house, to drive a car, to have access to technology and comforts that make my life easy. While I may bemoan the ineffectiveness of our government, I do not worry that the police will not come when I call, I consider it a given that when I flip the switch the electrical currents will flow, I don’t live in fear that the faith I confess will one day lead to my death. For my friends in Egypt, none of these things is a given. I am no more deserving or hard working than my students. I simply benefit from having ancestors who were given the opportunity to come to American and build a life for themselves, an opportunity most Egyptians would gladly take if offered to them.  

Every day since 25 January 2011, I have prayed for peace, justice and security for ALL Egyptians. The quiet words of this boy remind me of how much more must be accomplished before my prayer is answered and Christ’s blessed kingdom comes.