Tomorrow marks two weeks to the day since I returned from a trip with Catholic Relief Services (CRS) to Ghana. Our delegation visited several CRS projects in the northern region of Ghana, with the purpose of connecting U.S. Catholic high schools that have strong CRS/social justice practices with first-hand experience of the development work of CRS. I was lucky enough to be added to the trip through the diligence of my boss, help from the CRS West Regional Director, fate, and my recent forays into mission education. The ten of us delegates (principals and religion teachers from three U.S. Catholic high schools, two CRS staff from Baltimore plus one of their spouses, and myself) spent nine days in country, meeting the CRS country staff in Ghana and learning about their initiatives and work on health, sanitation, AIDS/HIV, agriculture and more. We befriended Ghanaians in villages, churches, health clinics, schools and homes, and were constantly welcomed with overwhelming, raw hospitality and love. It was powerful. I've been affected quite deeply.
In an attempt to process this experience and integrate my time in Ghana with my "normal" everyday life here in Seattle, I am choosing to take to the ... screen? ... and use this blog to navigate the honestly weird territory of conversion. Late Jesuit author Dean Brackley has a helpful definition of the term:
Conversion: developing the capacity to transcend ourselves intellectually and morally - and, ultimately, to fall in love with God.Well, maybe that's not so helpful after all. What I can say of what I am experiencing upon "re-entry" from Ghana to Seattle, of what I am naming as conversion, is that I am being stretched, big time. Possibly the intellectual and moral self-transcendence that Brackley refers to in his definition. I am being pulled beyond myself into (what I can only hope is) greater authenticity, reality, truth. Stretching like this hurts, it is uncomfortable, I no longer fit in the places that I used to fit in so well. I feel like a freakin' weirdo. There's the sense that this is all working for good (please be working for good!!) but the interior transformation is the stuff of paradigmatic shift, it's all-encompassing and total. My former self is dying. From the journal I kept while in Ghana,
I have to change in lasting ways. I need to or my soul will shrivel up. I will love less, be joyful less, be depressed and alone more. I will be a shadow.So how will I, and how am I, changing? Stay tuned!
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| Delegation (two folks not pictured) and staff at the CRS office in Tamale, Ghana. |
