“We are the music-makers,
And we are the dreamers of dreams,
Wandering by lone sea-breakers,
And sitting by desolate streams.
World-losers and world-forsakers,
Upon whom the pale moon gleams;
Yet we are the movers and shakers,
Of the world forever, it seems.”
– Arthur William Edgar O’Shaughnessy
Today is Saint Patrick’s Day in South Sudan. I’m making shepherd’s pie for dinner, building a campfire, loudly playing and singing Irish music (sorry team), and breaking out the Guinness cooling in the refrigerator.
There’s something about the Irish character (or at least my Americanized, watered-down-by-several-generations interpretation of the Irish character) that really resonates with how I see Christianity, particularly how Christianity plays out in places like South Sudan.
Irishness, as I understand it, involves both a great deal of sadness and a great deal of joy. Ireland certainly has had its share of hard times throughout its history: oppression, war, famine, poverty; yet the response seems to be one simultaneously of deep-seated sorrow coupled with a whole lot of fun and just enjoying life – good music, good beer, a good fight, dancing, storytelling, journeys.
Irishness has a whole lot of three things I think are pretty central to a proper Christian approach to life: grit, joy, and wonder.
We weary travelers are faced with and called to engage a world that is rotten to the core, full of oppression and heartbreak. But part of the whole coming to grips with grace thing, finding our place written in the larger narrative of redemption, is learning grit – that deep seated, ever-increasing awareness of just how broken and messed up the world is, and just how broken we are, insufficient in and of ourselves to ravel back together the unraveled world, but facing it all, the heartbreak of the world and ourselves, with confidence in Christ rather than giving in. We learn to grin at the darkness.
Granted, this is easier said than done. When the Health Center in Mundri this week ran out of the NGO funds that pay the salary of the majority of its employees, I was reminded of just how far this country has to go to get itself out of the trap of dependency. When I read in the news about more border clashes with Sudan, and read articles predicting that if South Sudan doesn’t get its act together regarding corruption they will fail and collapse again into chaos and conflict like so many new African states before them, I am tempted to lapse into cynicism, to write off this country as a lost cause.
Despair, it seems, is default. But we know how the story ends, and that ought to give us the confidence to throw ourselves headlong into the bigger story written onto the pages of history with daring, with wonder, and with joy. Our hearts should break more than most, but our hearts should burst with unbridled love of life and laughter more than most as well.
We’re the wanderers, the exiled, the storytellers, the freedom fighters, rough around the edges and broken-hearted and always wishing a bit for home. We’re the ones fighting for what looks like lost causes to the world, raveling together an unraveled world, singing the songs and dreaming the dreams and living with a ready wink and a grin and a twinkle in our eyes.
So on this Saint Patrick’s Day may you have your share of grit, of wonder, and of joy. Here’s to lost causes, laughter, good beer, and loud music.
Cheers.
South Sudan - Shaughnessy 