Last Day

November 16, 2006

Today is my last day with the IPC here on the Barranquilla coast. Rachel and Billie leave tomorrow am for a three day trip that I cannot go on with them so I am going to spend my final day here in Barranquilla with family. I found myself getting a bit teared up at different points today, I have met wonderful, beautiful people who are living out their faith in active ways. My accompaniment partners, Billie and Rachel have been fantastic, and I have finally been able to be a part for a short period of time, with the church here in Colombia that interests me so much. I have only scratched the surface, but luckily, Juan and I come back to Colombia yearly. German, our leader kept talking about the same thing today. He was saying, ¨We´ve talked about and listened to all sorts of political, social, anthropological, theological issues. The question now, is what does this mean for how you live out your faith.¨ And then he leans over to me, the only pastor in the group, and asks me how I´d deal with these things with the congregation I serve. These are tough questions. My local church has been struggling lately with issues of peacemaking, now that we are in a time of war. One of my friends at my church, Sue, sent me a quote yesterday via email that has a lot to say about the translation of all of these societal issues to our faith, as people who follow the Prince of Peace…

"The moral health of our world depends on the continued existence of communities of moral formation and accountability. Our communities can provide us with a place of integrity and respect where we are able to struggle with life dilemmas, build relationships, and foster understanding. This does not mean that communities are necessarily homogenous, nor are they places of refuge from conflict. Rather, communities are places where we are able to disagree, to challenge, to question, and to wrestle with moral issues within an environment of integrity and respect. The moral health of individuals depends on our ability to continue to sort out our responses to the world within the context of a community of dialogue and accountability."

These are all the things that it will come to me to be about as I return home and continue the journey…