Down The Memory Lane

As I await my old beat up truck to get fixed at Upendo Garage (repair of failing brakes, gear lever moving all over in the cabin and regular service and tightening bolts here and there), I have decided to work on the my silver jubilee missal. Went to post office first and was disappointed to find that the parcel with missal covers printed in Poland by Bożena, our Foundation CEO) has not arrived yet. Came to my favorite spot in Musoma then, fired up the macbook and opened the text file.

Interesting how such a simple work as proofreading and fixing styling and changing words here and there in my mission statement (call it extended CV) will evoke such a wonderful world of memories. Walking down the memory lane it has become...

Memories of my childhood, family, our small flat in Nowa Huta, my home parish, First Communion, Confirmation, my priestly vocation, friends and relatives. Kraków, Kona Street where my father lived with his parents and family (now Bandurskiego Street) before they moved to Krasinskiego avenue. I remember vaguely that house, the stairs leading to the main door, the entrance gate, the vegetation here and there...

Then Nowa Huta, kindergarten, primary school, secondary school, friendships, youthful follies and stupidities, dreams and visions of the adult life, fears and worries, hopes and achievements...

The reaction of my parents when I told then I was going to seminary, that I felt I had a vocation to priesthood... Reactions of my teachers and classmates...disbelief...

Then seminary life, first terrible weeks when my fears and expectations clashed heavily my the reality and I found myself packing and wanting to go back home...the conversation with my spiritual direction who asked me for patience and chance for the vocation... I felt so out of the place!

I took a leap of faith and gave the chance to the call...It was not easy... I am not sure I would want to go through the same experience for the second time... if I would manage to pull through... It was always about me, not about the seminary or the people who were making the seminary community. No, it was always about me, feeling strangely out of place, out of context...

The ordination, first pastoral experiences here and there, first parish in Sułkowice, then sudden switch to Jaworzno-Osiedle Stałe...challenging but wonderful years... learnt so much from so many... neverending gratitude...

Then the sudden vocation to missionary life in Africa... and the following preparations... with disbelief and pain of my parents, turned to be pride and support in the following years... Then the first pilgrimage to Rome and Assisi, the flight to Tanzania, the first days and weeks... such a steep learning curve... falling and standing up, till now...

And all that lies between from that first evening in Dar es Salaam on January 8, 1991 till today... As I go through the missionary CV and highlights of my missionary work in Tanzania, on one side I feel disbelief that God wanted to achieve so much (relatively - judging according to the size of my pond in which I swim) through such an awkward and shabby tool; on the other side I feel that I am still out of place here... somehow...difficult to explain... a misfit... yet belonging... unfulfilled yet, but weary and burnt out at the same time... feeling remorse and guilt, asking God for forgiveness, that He has to fight with this stubborn and crude tool of His choice... trying hard to do His Will somehow, but unsure if I really do so to His liking...

Walking down the memory lane... Unexpectedly, on this ordinary Monday morning, in Musoma, awaiting the vehicle, the silent witness and my old friend in my journeys for the past twenty years...

Something extraordinary out of utterly ordinary day...

Enchanting...