certification

Friday 7 February: Day 210

Conversations with Chaman, I

“Maybe the real miracle is internal – the contradiction between our biological impulse for rational explanations and our equally biological lust for hope, or for faith.  Why believe in anything we cannot see or prove?  Why believe in love? If a man on the street claimed to be a prophet, you would never believe him – but if he performed a miracle, an event with no explanation, then you might not think he’s crazy.  Similarly, a hope is a psychological even defined by its lack of rational explanation.  Forget the street – our minds are the greatest miracles of all.”

ميەرەكەل – myrakl – miracle

Saturday 8 February: Day 211

Running on the treadmill.

I leave my front door in Mucabira early in the morning.  I make my way to the village square, just down the street, thick fog still rolling in over the banana trees and between the tan cement homes of the community.  The red kiosk is on my right, and then I’m over the hump of the square (where boys play football after school for all to watch) and I’m struggling up the steep path to the small string of homes on the side of the first ridge to Rubona.  Three kids are watching goats eat breakfast in the grass and turn to wave hello, and I’m struggling to get past that steep road so just casually say hello in return.  Past the ridge the road slopes down towards the valley that rings the school.  A royal sunrise greets me, the fog reflecting lavender and auburn, which flash color in the small streams that form in the cracks of the dirt road and then disappear as I get closer.  I’m gaining speed.  A log bridge crosses the creek and a mother waves good morning, balancing a hoe on her shoulder, her tough feet not yet muddied by a day of farming. The village adjacent to the school is before me and the wooden shutters windows open for the first time, the unlit interiors of homes becoming briefly illuminated by gold.  The towering church seems to develop our of the fog like a dream wished to life.  I run along the exterior of the school, the new fence slowing losing way to the ingenious attempts of truancy by the students, no where to be seen on this day off.  The final stretch of road is flanked by two fields, one for growing stalks of beans wrapped around sticks and the other half-leveled for a future football pitch.  The health center is at the bottom of the road.  I stop to breathe.  Looking at the bright blue of the Rwandan flag furling gently in the morning wind, the sun magnificently draping light over a dozen peaks, I break easily.  I turn around and go home.

ڕا دەكات –  radekat – run

Sunday 9 February: Day 212

The sound of construction is especially loud during my Level 2 class so we take our lesson about directions outside.

“Where are we now?”

“Outside the English Access Institute.”

“Good!” We walk down the alley.  Light rain is just now starting to hit the garbage tossed on the street, not pushing it to the side.

“And now?  How do I get to this parking lot?” We’re standing next to an empty dirt park that a local mother charges drivers to stay at.  Puddles are forming in the mud and my students want to go back.

“Go out of EAI.  Go straight for 30 meters.  The parking lot is on the right.”

We continue around the corner.  At the intersection, turn left.  Go to the main road.  The clothes shop is across the street from the bus stop.  Continue along the road.  Stop at the intersection, under the awning of the phone store.

“Which way is south?”

Nobody answers.  Blank stares.

“Which way is the Sirwan River?”

Five students turn around in the rain and point in the same direction like ballerinas.

“Ok, so that’s south.  That means this is north, this is east and that’s west.  What’s on the southwest corner of the intersection?”

“A restaurant, a mobile shop…”

We continue until we have labeled all of the next-tos, across-froms, and nearbys.  My students all get it – I can practically hear that “click” of realization in their brains – and they paint their town with the words of a new language.

نەخشە – naxhesha – map

Monday 10 February: Day 213

Conversations with Chaman, II

“So if having a mind that can hold both rational explanation and irrational occurrence is in itself the greatest miracle, we must necessarily be willing to admit that if a man on the street performed a miracle, we would believe him – as our mind is miraculously capable of doing.  Why, then, do you say that you would deny any miraculous event before your eyes?  By your own accord, our capacity to believe in miracles is the greatest miracle of all – and yet here you are saying that such an actual, physically observable miracle mist be dismissed out of hand, according to the words of the Book.

We’re two miracles deep.  The first is the physical event we see that cannot be explained (water in to wine, staff in to snake) performed in front of your eyes.  The second is the mental capacity to accept the laws of the universe and the unexplainable events we may see.”

ناكۆكى – nakoky – paradox

Tuesday 11 February: Day 214

Mitsu is wearing that dress – the soft red one with flecks of bleach on the front, the one she wore as we unpacked her new home in Rwanda, the one that’s wrinkled like laugh lines and seems to flow through her wavy dark hair up to the crown of her head.  The weather is warm enough to not wear her usual cardigan and the dress is long enough to not wear leggings so she is free, allowed to let the sun coat her and warm everything but her left hand – that’s my job.  The young girls laugh at our contact and turn away to keep giggling, their faces blush.  Mitsu blinks and I can’t help but see the shot of color, like green tea, set against the dangling branches of the unkempt trees we walk under,

And I am in love.

پاشا – pasha – king

Wednesday 12 February: Day 215

There’s a cat screaming at night, in the distance.  It’s not happy.

But that’s all – all the bad, one howl in the night.  The day is clear, with soft clouds rolling over the city.  The air is fresh and wet, archetypical spring oxygen.  All of the parks are awake and wet, growing with abandon, as if nervously preparing for a moment of glory and then performing their hearts out on stage.  Water flows from piping without hesitation and spills on the streets like laughter.  Birds move in families between the wet bare cement walls of the few multiple-story buildings in the city, the flock oscillating in size like a school of fish.  The young are staring at their phones, of course, but the old walk slower and smile broadly at nothing, each step a memory coming back to life.  There is peace.

بەهار – bahar – spring

Thursday 13 February: Day 216

Conversations with Chaman, III

“We can take it a step further.  If you see a miracle on the street but deny its miraculous-ness, as the Book says you must, there is a fundamental contradiction present.  A paradox.  We want to not believe, but then we want to believe, and now you want to not believe again.  Can we say that your adherence to the Book, which demands your denial of the miraculous before you… is another miracle?

This sounds too crazy to follow.  The origin of your adherence to the Book and your casual denial of the miraculous is an acceptance of a miracle before you, or more accurately, an acceptance of a miracle before the eyes of someone you never met.  It sounds like the Book says to not believe in miracles at all.  To put it another way – you believe in the Book because of the miracles in the Book, but if a man on the street performed a miracle, you would choose not to believe it, because the Book says that miracles have not been performed since His death.

So the reason you believe the thing is the reason that you don’t believe the thing.

What am I missing?”

ژيربێژى – zhyrbehzhy – logic