Hiraeth

 

I came across an interesting word a while ago, "Hiraeth." It's a Welsh word that has been translated in a small variety of ways, one of them being "Nostalgia for a home you can never return to."

For the last nine years, Orealla has been home. That's a third of my life, and most of my adult life. Throughout that time there have been gradual changes, obviously, but it has remained essentially the same place.

When the Covid lockdowns began, they brought the first massive upheaval I had experienced here. The meetings and ministry changed in such drastic ways that we're still struggling to get our in-person meetings back to what they were before. But the greatest change has been with the people. Through death or people simply leaving the truth, we lost about 20% of our congregation. Some of these I talked about on this blog before, such as when Vincent Miguel died days before the Memorial. Others I have not talked about, usually because I had no idea what to say about it. But getting back to Orealla and feeling the difference, I've finally figured out what to say.

Among our losses in the last two years was Mark Herman. I met him just two weeks into my first Guyana trip. In those days meeting attendance was very low, sometimes just five showing. Mark was always one of them, despite needing to be brought in a wheelchair or wheelbarrow. When Public Witnessing carts were first sent to Guyana, the branch ensured the first one was sent in for Orealla so that Mark could use it and more freely share in the ministry. He immediately signed up to auxiliary pioneer and put the cart to use. By time 2020 hit, he was serving as an elder, attended Pioneer School, and had his life story published in the Watchtower.

Then a few weeks ago I got a message that he had died. He was 36. The funeral had Zoom connected, and so many people came it filled us to capacity and more were trying to get in. I had no idea this man who rarely left his village had so many friends and had had such an impact on so many people's lives.

In his life story linked above, he repeatedly talks about the death of those close to him and what a large effect it had on his life. I often wonder if he ever suspected his own death would have a similar effect on the rest of us.

Coming back to Orealla and finally getting an in-person in the Kingdom Hall here (my first since 2019) had the unmistakable feeling of being back home, but there being something huge missing. I found myself getting lost in my notes during a talk because I kept staring at the empty spots where Mark and Vincent normally sat. This was home, but somehow not the same one I had left.

The entire week since I've been thinking of the Apostle John. Specifically his time on Patmos and afterward. When he began his service, he had an incredible circle of friends. He had a central scope of work, and a home base to work from. But by time Patmos and Revelation came, his friends were long gone. Jerusalem was gone. His scope of responsibility had grown unbelievably large. The attitude of his fellow Christians would have been changing as the apostasy neared. His understanding (or assumption) of what the near future held would have changed more times than I can count. And I wonder how often he too experienced hiraeth. A longing for that familiar home he once had that he could never get back to.

But here's the point: even if he did experience that, what did he do about it? He did his job. He accepted whatever direction he got and kept moving. Even under imprisonment he took extensive notes of the vision he was receiving, and after release still devoted himself to writing to the congregations and to recording the life of Jesus. The circumstances around him changed more than I can comprehend, but he maintained the zeal and obedience he'd had when things were familiar. And though he could never have returned to the familiar, many of the changes he saw were for the better.

So what should I be doing? Accepting the change, good and bad. Be grateful for the happy memories I have from before, and look for the positive in the new ones.

Case in point: my new house, pictured at the start of this entry. I finally get a home with running water inside.

An Elaborate Attempt to Get Life Back to Normal

 

 "Apart from me you can do nothing at all." - John 15:5

As you have possibly noticed, this blog has been pretty inactive since last September. The last entry ended with me saying that I was in the US and still joining my congregation on Zoom for service and meetings, and that I "should be able to continue to do so until I'm able to physically return to Guyana (which will be when? Who knows. Covid cases in the US and Guyana both are going up, so we'll see how things pan out)."

 Turned out the answer was it would be August 3rd. Many things got in the way, including (but not limited to) Covid cases in Guyana skyrocketing briefly, two of my flights getting cancelled, my visa running out, Guyana getting labelled a "Do Not Visit" destination, and so forth. Every day when I looked at flights again it seemed like the headlines were always an airline cancelling or delaying thousands of flights and passengers getting stranded at airports throughout the world. This is all well and good though, since being in the pandemic era, my physical location didn't really matter too much. But then in-person meetings started back up, public witnessing began going again, and I have many many return visits and studies that I simply was never able to contact through the phone and who I really wanted to get back to.

Ultimately though, I couldn't figure out whether this endless hassle of trying to get back was a casualty of world events, or if I was in effect getting hit on the head and told it was time to just up and leave Guyana. Around this same time I was doing Memorial Bible reading, and I came across the verse mentioned above. Now, while this verse is not necessarily related directly to what I was experiencing at the time (if you want a correct explanation and context, see here and here and here and here instead) it did have the effect of making me pause and consider: how much of those failing plans were me trying to work out for myself what to do?

So I decided to give it another go. But first, I was going to very thoroughly pray about it. I was going to very thoroughly lay out my plans for return. I was going to ask for clear answers as to what was happening and how I should respond. Then the process of making plans began.

First thing you'll notice when making plans to travel from Ohio to Guyana is that it is hardly going to be a pleasant trip. Many available options involve swapping airports or sitting in Miami for 23 hours. The other option is a short flight from one place to another, to another, to another, to another, which only seemed like it would increase the opportunities for a flight to get cancelled on me. I finally found a sequence of flights that seemed like a reasonable balance between number of flights and duration of layovers (with the added bonus of getting to spend a few days with friends in Arizona) and put the plan into motion.

6 AM meeting with my congregation on Zoom. Time zones are my enemy.

I was still positively terrified of everything that could go wrong, but there was only one way to test out whether I should still attempt going back, so I went ahead and tried it. August 1st was the date for my leg of flights leading to Guyana, and the fear hadn't really passed. The fear that my life had turned into an enormous Jenga tower and something was going to come along and kick it over. But that morning I took a look at the Daily Text and saw something interesting:

"Apart from me you can do nothing at all." - John 15:5

It's startling how helpful that reminder can be. So off we went to the airport. And two interesting things happened.

1. Everything that could possibly go wrong did. Flights delayed? Yes. Lost baggage? Of course. Visa trouble? Absolutely.

2. Everything went fine. As in, I still made it here. We were super late, the total flight took from Monday 7:00 pm until Wednesday 1:30 am, but I made it back. Everything that could've possibly inconvenienced me is what occurred. Nothing that could have ruined the trip did.

Obviously I have still have many outstanding questions. I'm still in the capital of Guyana trying to figure out what will happen to my visa and if I'll be able stay longer than the 3 months they gave me. Many of those prayers are still unanswered. But clearly I have no reason to worry. I'm not going to rely on myself. I'm going to keep moving ahead in whatever seems to be the right way, and then respond to direction or answers to prayers when they come.