Choosing, knowing, and loving

I spent the week before last in Kabul. Several of us traveled from around the country to attend the interment of Tom and Dan, the two old-timers killed on the eye camp. They both arrived in the 1970s.

The day was sacred. The funeral was so well done, mostly in English but the committal in Dari and the blessing in Pashto. There was a proper graveside where foreigners and Afghans together threw dirt on the caskets, ashes to ashes, dust to dust. Then there was a memorial reception afterwards for slides and storytelling from friends and their family.

Three themes continued to reoccur to me – choosing, knowing, and loving.

Shortly after the murders, as he watched the news in America SG wrote, “It has been a strange story to read about, as written into every account is the thread of love that these people had for Afghanistan. Knowing what they knew, they loved.”

I mentioned before the Mumford & Sons song, “Timshel,” a Hebrew word that means thou mayest, going back to the story of Cain and Able. Tom and Dan and the other eight people on the camp made choices. The men who killed them made choices. During the slideshow and storytelling both of the men’s eldest daughters emphasized their dads stayed here because they loved it and not because they were any more exceptional than anyone else. They chose to stay. They were most alive hiking to the remotest regions to bring care where no one else would go.

Straight after, KF stood to the open mic and said Tom was his hero. He read what C.S. Lewis had written about George MacDonald, Lewis' hero, “MacDonald illustrates, not the doubtful maxim that to know all is to forgive all, but the unshakable truth that to forgive is to know. He who loves, sees.”

I talked with KB over the back of my chair as the crowd dispersed for dinner. The families had catered in a beautiful courtyard overlooking gardens and the city. It’s the most beautiful I’ve ever seen Kabul city.

KB said two things kept coming to her out of this narrative: God gives us passions, makes us in such a way as to love certain things, people, places, work, as these men loved it here, and that’s what it means about the yoke being easy and the burden light. But God only uses us when we’re willing, and not everyone chooses to follow his or her passions and calling. (And of course, not everyone's passion or calling is to this place!)

Dan and Tom had seen as much or more than many citizens of this country, staying at times when millions of refugees fled. They saw. This place can break your heart. My recently returned friend PS wrote yesterday, "It seems I follow a God of lost causes. I am not sure how I feel about that. As Nathan says, ‘I have joined the long defeat’."

Knowing what they knew, they loved.