The Magic of the Ordinary Meets the Epiphany....

The Magic of the Ordinary Meets the Epiphany

 ⁵ For what we preach is not ourselves, but Jesus Christ as Lord, and ourselves as your servants for Jesus’ sake. ⁶ For God, who said, “Let light shine out of darkness,”^[a] made his light shine in our hearts to give us the light of the knowledge of God’s glory displayed in the face of Christ.

2Corinthians 4:5-6

“The magic of the street is the mingling of the errand and the epiphany.”
― Rebecca Solnit, Wanderlust: A History of Walking

This is the perfect quote for me.  I was going to the market today in Malakal, South Sudan.  I am still not quite sure how I ended up in Malakal, but that is another story.  This story is about the magic of the street.

I am new in Malakal.  I have been here two whole days now.  Yesterday I went to the market by myself for the first time.  There is just something magical about walking the roads in Africa to me.  We don’t walk enough in the US I am convinced.  When I go to a new place I love to walk.  I am eager and excited to get a sense of where I am.

that is how dusty the sky is here!

Each new corner I turn is an epiphany in itself.  Each face I see, each new person I meet.  There are extraordinary stories to be found in the magic on the streets.  I want to experience new places with all five senses.  I want see the sights, explore the people, I want to hear how the wind sounds when it blows, the sounds of the traffic, the people, the animals.  I want to feel the road pass by under my feet and I want to taste the air as I walk through it.  Is it heavy or light, clean or dirty, does it feel happy or tense or sad?  I want to talk to the people and hear their stories.  All rolled together, that is the magic we miss when we go whizzing by all wrapped up in our cars or our thoughts and don’t pay attention to the world around us.

Today I would have missed the man concerned for his village “back home”.  If I hadn’t stopped to give my greetings and shake his hand I wouldn’t know that he is concerned for the children there not having an education because there are no teachers that will go there.  And further on, I would have missed the laughter of little girls who tried to learn to skip with me as we made our way down the road or missed the wonder in a little boy’s eyes as he touched my white skin and looked at his finger to see if he turned white too.  The magic of the street and the mingling of the epiphany …

Yesterday I would have missed the wonderful taste and smell of the ice cream as the man shaped this with a smile on his face. beautiful pink and yellow rose bud on a mini cone and handed it to me with the flourish of a bow and said “Thank you, now the boy will have bread” as he indicated the ragged boy standing next to him.  I would have missed the laughter in the crinkled eyes of the old man as I tried to figure out what he was saying in Arabic as he laughed at my feeble attempts to hold up enough fingers to figure out how much he wanted me to pay for something.  I would have missed the wonderful rich smells and the pictures of the women cooking strange and exotic looking food under plastic tarps, on charcoal fires on the ground – food I had never seen before – the magic of the streets meets the epiphany.

The day before I would have missed seeing “finely minced meat in a finger shop” on a Chinese restaurant menu in Juba; I never did get to taste it, but it was funny to see.  I would have missed the “Returning Women’s Restaurant – best food in town” and a wonderful chance to see them at work, and smell the wonderful scents of traditional food being cooked and prepared over the open fires as they readied for the lunch hour – the magic of the streets meets the epiphany.

I could write forever about the epiphanies of the last few weeks.  Who would have ever dreamed that in less than three weeks I would have landed in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, then flew off to Juba, South Sudan, taken another plane to Akobo, been in the middle of intertribal violence and been evacuated and landed up in the middle of a completely different place in Malakal!  Each step of this incredible journey has been a mingling of the errand and the epiphany.

Each place I have stopped along this incredible journey, I have met with wide–eyed wonder. I wonder if that is the same expressions the wise men and the shepherds had on their faces as they met Jesus for the first time and realized how special he was. 

I read the following article today, on this day we celebrate the Epiphany in our churches.  I won’t share all of it because it is long, but I will share what was important to me…

Epiphanies are made for sharing . . . . . . . . . Father Thomas Rosica, CSB
                                                                        Solemnity of the Epiphany, Year A, Dec. 25, 2010

     "The word ‘epiphany’ means ‘to show forth.’ Epiphanies, both large and small, tend to be private events – yet events with great significance for the public. Trying to share the details with another of an epiphany is fraught with complications. The words are never quite right, and even the most sympathetic listener cannot fully bridge the gap between description and what is was like being there. Most of us keep our personal experiences of the Holy to ourselves. Who would believe it? And who would really understand? The irony is that epiphanies are made for sharing, even as they are impossible to communicate fully.…

"Unlike the poor shepherds, the Magi had to travel a long road; they had to face adversity to reach their goal. It was anything but a romantic, sentimental pilgrimage that we often see in our manger scenes!…

     "The experience of the magi reminds us that all who make the tedious journey to the truth will finally encounter it and be changed in the process. They can never go back to a ‘business as usual’ way of life. When we meet Christ and see who he really is, we will never be the same – and only then can we hope to begin to share in his mission.…"

The first and second paragraphs really stood out to me in the aftermath of the last few weeks.  Especially the part about trying to share the details being fraught with complications.  It isn’t that I don’t want to tell the story and share it with you.  It is more, that I don’t know how to tell is so it can make sense to you.  And yes, it is a private event that could have great significance if it opens the eyes of others to the plight of the people in South Sudan. 

I think the quote I started with is the best description of the past two weeks.  I was caught up in the magic of the ordinary – getting settled into a new place, learning a new language, meeting new people and learning to live in a new culture, going to the market, cooking, cleaning – the ordinary and I was swept up into this incredible epiphany that ended with me flying from one end of the country to another.

The second paragraph also reminds me that no journey with Christ will always be easy.  The roads will sometimes be long and filled with adversity.  It has been that way since the first visitors came to meet him and it will continue to be that way long, long after I have left my footprints in the sands that follow him.  The magic of the ordinary meets the epiphany….

I wonder what God has in store for us next…