“God lead us to our footpath:
Lead us there where in simplicity
we may move at the speed of natural creatures
and feel the earth’s love beneath our feet
Nothing can be loved at speed.” – Leunig

I move far too fast, far too often.

This morning I learnt for the thousandth time the value of moving slowly and openly. Well slowly-ish at least. We bike everywhere here in Gulu. In some ways even biking is still too fast, you still miss a lot. You don’t stop and talk, you don’t cuddle the cat on the corner, you don’t notice anyone’s problems. But biking is slow and open enough at least to smile and greet along the way. It’s slow enough that God at least has the chance to speak.

It’s all too easy no matter where we are in the world to surround ourselves with walls. We leave our 4 walled house, enter our 4 walled car, go to our 4 walled work and then hit repeat. It’s easy to keep walls around your heart when there are always walls around your body.

This morning I biked to work, and had the great pleasure of greeting our community on the way. 7 times I shared a greeting , but 3 of them carried great weight, and I couldn’t get them out of my head.

A man smiled and waved “Otim, bin ka mato kongo” – “Otim, come have a drink with me”. And yes, by “a drink” he means an alcoholic beverage. And yes, it was 8:30 in the morning. I smiled back and yelled “Good morning, thank you” before rolling on. I was struck by how normal and open his brokenness was. Being drunk at 8:30am isn’t great. He wasn’t digging in the fields to make sure his family was fed, or selling chapatis on the side of the road. For whatever reason he was drinking with his mates on the side of the road. By 8:30am already I had already been moved by friendly brokenness.

A 12 year old girl yelled out “Icho Daktar Otim” – “Good morning doctor Otim”. I reflected how my title came before my name. Forget being white, forget being rich, just being a doctor alone grants me a status here that’s hard to fathom. My privilege is always before me, and maybe that’s healthy. By 8:35 am already been confronted with my status.

I’ve saved the best until last. Our neighbor Lucy spends her whole life moving slowly, because she doesn’t have the capacity to move fast. This bestows on her several advantages. She knows everyone in the community. People come to her every day for advice, or a story,  or a laugh, or for help, for a meal or sometimes all of them at the same time. While we shut our front door too often, hers is always open. In fact she’s usually on the veranda waiting to welcome the next visiting angel.

Every morning when I’m biking out of our compound, she smiles and commands,

“Nick, Mot Lutwo” – “Nick, greet the sick for me”. She doesn’t call me “doctor” like the young woman on the road, I’m Nick her friend, her neighbour . She commands me softly not to cure the sick, or work hard but to greet them and share our humanity. That first, we are a child of God, then everything else. Lucy reminds me that I’m not a machine mending other machines, but a human helping other humans. Today, my work isn’t just about solving problems, it’s first about meeting people where they’re at and offering what I can.

Lucy knows more than most what it’s like to be sick, what it’s like to suffer. She has a condition which means that every few months she suffers much pain and is admitted to hospital. “Greet the sick for me” comes from her heart, out of deep experience and empathy.

She teaches us to move a little slower, be a little more human, a little more alive.

Move slowly, move well.

(The whole Leunig prayer)

“Dear God,

We pray for another way of being:
another way of knowing.

Across the difficult terrain of our existence
we have attempted to build a highway
and in so doing have lost our footpath.
God lead us to our footpath:
Lead us there where in simplicity
we may move at the speed of natural creatures
and feel the earth’s love beneath our feet.
Lead us there where step-by-step we may feel
the movement of creation in our hearts.
And lead us there where side-by-side
we may feel the embrace of the common soul.
Nothing can be loved at speed.

God lead us to the slow path; to the joyous insights
of the pilgrim; another way of knowing: another way of being. Amen”.