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Biography
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"Raining Joy" Now, the rainy season was never, ever guaranteed. It was a matter of waiting for the rainy season, praying for the rainy season, living with our fingers and our hearts crossed that the rainy season would come. And, oh, when it came, when it came these big drops of joy from the sky that came drumming on the tin roof of our school. And they drummed and drummed until they actually drowned the teacher’s voice. The teacher had to give up on the lesson on math or science or English and said, “Today we will just sing and sing and sing! As long as it rains we will sing.” And we would walk to school splashing as we stomped on those puddles of water. When the rain came, it changed everything. The red soil, the dusty paths all began to turn green with the sprouting millet and sorghum. And suddenly there was this carpet of green around us. When the rain came, everything changed. It became a whole different world. When I think of joy, I’m reminded of the rain. And I’m also reminded of that Jesus story as told to us in the Gospel of Luke. The first Christmas, the story says, an angel came to the shepherds as they looked after their sheep. The story says the angels said to them, “Fear not! I bring you tidings of great joy.” And then the sky began to rain angels. Angels everywhere, singing, “Praise to God!” Singing, singing like we sang as the rain began to beat on our tin roof at the school I went to in grade school. Raining joy. And this little baby grows up. And when he’s all grown up, they say he’s about 33 years old, his last meal with his friends, seated at the table, knowing that the next day we would as dead as a door nail, he speaks to them and he tells them he came so that their joy may be full, may be complete. That their joy may be full. Now the world knows how to package happiness but the world doesn’t know much about joy. Joy. I’m not splitting hairs when I say joy is different from happiness. Happiness might be the pleasure of the moment, but joy—now, let me tell you about joy—joy is different. Joy is about endurance. Enduring yesterday in the hope that tomorrow will be a better day. Oh, we prayed for rain. We endured the season without rain hoping, that the rain would come. Joy is about hope. Joy is about peace. Living in the peace in spite of the moment. All around us. We would go to the hospital and often the doctors would be too few, if any. The medicine would run out before anyone we knew had their prescription filled. But we lived in this peace and in this hope and this endurance that the rain would come. And when the rain came everything would change. And then we went to Sunday school and learned about joy. And the Sunday school teacher tells us joy is J-O-Y. Jesus first. Others next. Yourself last. J for Jesus, O for others, Y for yourself. And in this community of the Meru tribe that was critical. Learning how to live in community. You see, joy is not just an individual pursuit. Joy is about community and the laughter and the peace and the endurance and the tying in together of family and community. You know, when I think of joy I am immediately transported to my growing up with the rain on my school’s tin roof. What is joy to you? Are you able to live with one foot in the past and another foot in firmly in the future? Jesus says, “I have come that you might know joy and know your joy completely and fully.” May God give you joy today and all the days of this good life that God has granted us. Conversation with Grace Imathiu Daniel Pawlus: Grace, thank you so much for sharing that beautiful message with us. Grace Imathiu: Thank you. Great to be here! Pawlus: I think you have a wonderful perspective on joy, growing up in Africa and coming from Africa. I’d like to talk to you about my friends that have visited Africa and have certainly seen the poverty and the struggle that exist there, but have also been struck by the simple joy that the people feel in their lives. Can you speak to that a little bit? Imathiu: Yes. For me, I actually didn’t want to talk about joy as a smiley face kind of joy, but joy as endurance. That joy is not just this kind of just a smile but there is something powerful and strong about joy, about knowing the poverty and the difficulty of yesterday and having the hope about tomorrow. Joy is not among my favorite words, actually. I’d rather talk about grief and suffering and those kind of heavy things. But joy, as I have explored joy, and C. S. Lewis especially talking about surprised by joy, or the power of joy. Pawlus: So you’re talking about how joy can sustain us through difficult times into the future, to appreciate that even more. Imathiu: Yes. Yes. Very much so. Talbot: You mentioned C.S. Lewis. Of course, his book “Surprised by Joy.” And she was the unexpected gift in his life who later became his wife. You know, he also talks about waiting and you in your beautiful, beautiful story about your home in Kenya, Meru, waiting for the drops of rain. C. S. Lewis says, “Give frozen pipes and blizzards but not this waiting room of the world,” talking about winter. But you, ironically to most of us, are waiting for the rain as a symbol of joy. Most people want the sun. Imathiu: Yes. Yes. And I think the joy of the rain might have been fed by the waiting and the passion. The passion in the joy we felt when the rain came was perhaps because of the waiting which is so very different from the way life is around me anymore where you don’t have to wait. You kind of give me the diet pill that works now! Instant remedy now! Give my happiness now! So the joy in learning also how to wait that can feed the passion when the moment happens and there is hope of tomorrow. What is your experience of joy? Pawlus: Well, joy for me is I recall sharing times with my grandmother, who I was very close to. It’s an emotional thing for me as much as an intellectual response. But I think we don’t have enough of it in life. As you said, we’re very good at happiness but it’s harder to go deeper to have the patience to really wait to experience joy. Do you agree as well? Lydia Talbot: Well, joy for me, a couple of days ago, was seeing a smile break out on my 21 year old niece’s face as she’s dying of a brain tumor. And yet her girlfriends gathered from college and she sat there nearly paralyzed, unable to speak, but the smile broke out on her face. And that was one of those unexpected, transforming moments of joy for all of us around her. I’m looking at you and you are so beautiful in your beautiful native dress. Tell about your garment which you bought in Kenya last year. Imathiu: Thank you. Well, I often wear my African garb, African clothes. People ask me, “What do you call it?” I say, “Clothes!” Just because it’s also a way of living Africa for me as I travel around the world, as I live in this place now, as a representative of a whole group of people, many of them invisible on the planet. So that’s part of that. But I like the way you talked about the unexpectedness of joy and also the signs of joy. What are the signs of joy that I expressed. What are the signs of joy. Talbot: And, of course, you have a beautiful child, Eric. Tell about—he’s five years old now—the joy that you see in your child. The significance of his middle name. Imathiu: Oh. Eric Mugambi. I have a child going into K5 now, kindergarten, and it’s been the most wonderful experience of my life. This joy bringer who was totally unexpected, just a gift from God, a prayer that was answered and I hadn’t even prayed this prayer. That God is so gracious, that God hears prayers that you should have prayed but didn’t know you needed to pray. So this joy bringer of a child who teaches me to just appreciate so many little things in my busy life, to take care of the little things as well. Talbot: Eric Mugambi. Imathiu: Eric Mugambi. Talbot: Whom you followed all the way to kindergarten to take his picture! Imathiu: As he went to kindergarten, I put him on the school bus and actually got in the van and followed the school bus to school and watched him get off the school bus! Pawlus: I know that God calls us to experience joy. I’m wondering if you can speak to us about how we can come closer to that in our prayer life. When you’re preaching and talking about joy, where does that come from, so that we can clear away the clutter, because you talk about that, and really go a little deeper in that experience? Imathiu: I love that Jesus is so gracious when he looks around at his friends, people like me who are asking the same question, and he’s so gracious in saying, “I will give you my joy that your joy will be complete.” Because I think many of us don’t trust joy. Maybe some of us trust suffering more. Some of us trust grief more. Joy seems as though you’re waiting for the other shoe to drop so you dare not be too high so you that you don’t crash too low. So Jesus almost has to take a piece of himself and say, “Here. Here’s bread. Eat this. Chomp on this, that I can be part of you and you might experience my joy because I know you’re nervous about joy.” Talbot: Joy, not for all circumstances, but... Talbot and Imathiu: ...in all circumstances. Imathiu: Yes. Yes. Talbot: Even when we’re at the bottom of the pit. I want to have you transport us back to Kenya for a moment. The culture there and your father. You yourself are the child of a distinguished Methodist bishop in Kenya. And Methodist University that you have been so active in there. Does your father speak to you about how proud he is? Imathiu: Oh, I am very proud of my father and my mother. They’ve just been such wonderful role models for me. Talbot: But does he tell you how proud he is of you? You’ve got to share that with us. Imathiu: My father doesn’t tell me in my face how proud he is of me but I know he is because I have heard it from those who he has spoken to about me. Talbot: And this reflects a cultural value, doesn’t it? Imathiu: Yes. Culturally, at least from our tribe, he would not speak of this pride in me, to me openly. But those who hear him in my absence say that he glows when he speaks about me. And I am also very proud of him. Yeah. Pawlus: Yet there is great joy in the African faith practice experience, right? The drumming and many other things I’m sure that you experience. Imathiu: Yes. Yes. I mean you’ve got to sing out the despair! You’ve got to sing out the giving up. You’ve got to sing away all that in order to clear the clutter to be able to have 20/20 vision about tomorrow. Talbot: Is it “toi, toi”? Isn’t that the chant that is a chant of joy? Imathiu: In South Africa, yes. And yet I want to say it’s not a “smiley face” joy. It’s not just a very superficial, blind joy. It’s sort of a very subversive, subversive stand that in spite of the despair, I’m going to dare hope, you know. It looks like a dead end, but I’m going to find a way up, you know. So there’s a certain subversive stand in joy. Talbot: So there is a soaring up, a rising up. Imathiu: Yes. Rising up. Talbot: Here you are a Cambridge, England graduate. You traveled all over the world. Your recent book Words of Fire. And you’re doing a dissertation or is that done yet? Imathiu: Not yet. That is on the back burner. Talbot: What do you hope it will be? Imathiu: I’m now working on another book. It’s called Elsewhere and it’s about living in different places around the world. Talbot: What inspired that? Imathiu: The joy of living in different places around the world! Talbot: Like? Imathiu: Like Lappland, Sweden, Kenya, Tennessee, and Wisconsin. Talbot: Where you serve your local church. Pawlus: Thank you so much, Grace. Imathiu: Thank you. Talbot: A beautiful name, Grace. Thanks for being with us. |
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