I had a farm in Africa

Yesterday I attended church with my parents. Dick is out of town on business, and it’s much easier to take care of the kids at Grandma’s house, even if she does mysteriously disappear at bedtime. She encourages messes in her kitchen, and she has a Xanadu-like backyard complete with swings, treehouse, grass, pool, garden, trampoline, and sand. And a dog and a cat. What else is childhood?

Church was fantastic. Most of the time I’m glad I went to church by the time it’s over. Glad I hauled my sorry self there and taught the seven-year olds that Jesus answers our prayers. Glad that we made it through the main service with only four bags of fruit snacks and no major tantrums. Glad to speak with other believers about how the gospel really did make our lives that much better last week.

Yesterday I thought about the building itself, the chapel I grew up in, went to youth activities in, the building I returned to after a year of dissipation and disenchantment, where I felt once again that God loved me, the building where I proudly brought my fiance for approval, and where the people who knew me as a teenager congratulate me on the cuteness of my children.

My parents are meeting in a new building next week. It’s closer, and fancier. My dad is the reluctant leader of the congregation, and everyone will move to the new chapel with much excitement and a little nostalgia. We talk a lot in our church about how the gospel is “the same” everywhere you go. And I have found this to be true in Harlem and The Bronx, in Hon-Atsugi and Cairo, in Florida and in Utah.

But the gospel at my church really isn’t the same as that taught in other Christian churches, and less similar still to that taught in synagogues and mosques and shrines. Sometimes it can’t really be surprising that man fights wars: we are so different, and most of us only experience one-millionth of what there is in the world. My brother has attended church in that same building for all the seventeen years of his life. In two years, he’ll serve a mission for our church; he might go to Russia or Argentina or Idaho. He will not be ready. No one could be.

Dick and I watched The Kingdom a couple weeks ago. It’s about FBI agents sent to investigate the bombing of an American facility in Saudi Arabia. At the end, Leavitt (Chris Cooper) asks Fleury (Jamie Foxx) what he said to comfort a friend of one of the people who died in the bombing. Fleury says he promised her “that we were gonna kill ‘em all.”

Interspersed with that scene is dialogue between relatives of the bomber. The aunt says: “Tell me, what did your grandfather whisper in your ear before he died?” The 15-year old granddaughter of the terrorist answers that he said, “Don’t fear them, my child. We are going to kill them all.”

In the end, Fleury is a hero not because he finds and executes the bomber. He is a hero because he befriends a Saudi police officer and grieves at his death as he would for his own brother. He regrets wanting to “kill ‘em all.”

Fleury sees the father, the husband, the police officer, and the man in the Saudi Arabian. I see that man in scenes of him praying with his family, father and sons in one room, mother and daughters in another. That is at once completely alien to how I worship, and yet familial and familiar. It is hard to envision wanting to wage war against someone who loves their family and prays to God for their safety, just as I pray to God for the safety of the family I love.

Sally was young when we lived in Cairo. She doesn’t remember the mosques and the minarets. I have almost forgotten them myself. In Cairo we attended church on Fridays in a private villa. Here in the States we go on Sundays to one of the cookie-cutter chapels that dot each city block.

I teach the same gospel to my children that was taught to me, and I believe that the God I worship is the same God worshipped by others in their synagogues and mosques and shrines and cathedrals.

I don’t know why I have the specific life I have. The husband, the kids, the crappy shoulder, my own set of teeth, unfairly-graying hair, the angst about being a stay-at-home mom, the inability to imagine doing anything else right now.

In Cairo we had a maid, Nadia, who was a widow with three sons. She lived, literally, for those boys, cleaning my apartment and several others to feed them. As stupid as it is to compare maternal sleep-deprivation to real poverty, my own experience of being a mother made her sacrifice for her sons seem at once more noble and more mundane.

As Nadia is a mother, so am I. I raise three girls, support my husband, love my family, attempt to live my religion. Pretty freakin’ small potatoes. Completely insignificant in the history of the world. Almost as significant as Nadia raising her three boys, mourning her husband, loving her family, living her religion.

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We watched The Kingdom edited by our Clearplay DVD player. So don’t go asking me about all the violence.

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This post is part of the MMSM carnival. To join in, simply write on anything that makes you smile and follow these guidelines for a little extra exposure for your post.

This week Marigold at Sit. Stay. Good Blog. has a cute little post about speakerphones. I’m glad her boss gives her as much to laugh and ponder about as my three little dictators do. Dick is always telling me that he has to change “metaphorical” poopy diapers at work. That never gets him much sympathy around here.