Home again, but not as we know it...

It’s now 5 days since my return from Haiti and there is some sign of things quietening down. I’ve slept in 7 different beds in the last 8 days but its now only 48 hours till I’m back in my own.

I’m back in Northumbria, with a view to reflect on my experiences over the last few months generally, and few weeks in particular. Quietness, space and solitude are helpful aids to reflection it’s true – but busyness, pressure and chaos has its place as well. Can you understand the bedlam of a Haitian slum better from a rural retreat or a crowded tube? None of us have the luxury of sitting entirely outside our world, so as to coolly observe it, that’s the challenge – we are all involved, responsible.

I guess that’s my overriding thought as I begin to look back. God is everywhere, his voice is always there to be heard, often it’s more of a cry demanding attention. If we take the time to look and listen, it’s not so difficult to hear him speak … much more tricky to respond.

Returning to ‘ordinary life’ after a visit to a place like Haiti brings inevitable tensions. Even after just a few weeks the culture clash is significant, what counts as important or significant is turned on its head. It’s not that the poverty is a surprise, and the much commented on ‘anger’ at the triviality of so many of our daily concerns will inevitably fade. But what can, or ought to, remain?

I’ve described my feelings to some as being like that of grief, when your world has been so affected yet all around you seems to carry on obliviously, and you want to shout at it to stop and take notice. As with grief, the task, over time, is not to get back to how things were before, but to find a new way to live which takes into account all that’s happened. It's the old question of discipleship, ‘How then shall we live?’

A visit makes the question all the more urgent. An email or a blog, newspaper report or any second hand account, cannot convey with anything like the same intensity, the challenge of standing in front of, looking into the eyes of, a hungry child as she asks for ‘one dollar?’ You may or may not hand over the cash there and then, but the question follows you home, and is likely to end up being a lot more costly.

I will be talking much more about Haiti, in a series of blogs, linked to specific people or events, over the next couple of weeks. But, for now, the big question, that’s dominated the whole of my 3 month break, remains. If Jesus is Lord, of everything, what does it look like to live an ordinary life?