Author: Rachel Woodworth

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Reviews Stories In Focus

Where Antelope Roam // A Book Reviewed and an Author Revered

A book review ought to start, more than likely, with the book. But my review can’t begin there. It begins with the man. The man who wrote the book, who gathered days and moments, adventures and seasons, who recalled and reminisced and turned memories to words, to pages, to chapters, to book: a collection of short stories bound in Where Antelope Roam.

Photo Courtesy of: Amazon.com
Photo Courtesy of: Amazon.com

I cannot separate the book from the man; but then, I don’t need to. This is autobiography—what makes the book worth reading is the man who lives a life worth reading. I vouch for the value of both.

I begin, however, with the author. An author I first knew as a professor.

With an energy and eagerness (either endearing or embarrassing) of my college freshman self, I sat in his Cultural Anthropology classroom. Before the end of his two hour class, I remember clearly thinking “I want to do what he does.” Now this, I’m coming to learn, has less to do with the specifics of doing—with mimicking job or education or, not to give too much away, the handling of horned vipers—but the being. And this is harder to articulate and harder to enact.

What I sensed in that classroom, and what I sense in the pages of this book, is this fullness of life. A character and a being, a posturing, that is wonderful—that is, really, full of wonder. It is this unwavering joy in life—a firm confidence in the value of here: this place, this person, this landscape and moment before me. It is this seeking and spotting of goodness that is wholly refreshing and inspiring. It is wise. In being lost, in carrying out difficult work in a sometimes difficult climate and context, in childhood and career and aging, in adventure and misadventure, there is a lightheartedness and there is always learning.

This is an incredible life and these are incredible stories about a person and a place, beloved. Africa, a continent so often stereotyped or skewed, is given life and image through Arensen’s stories: it is spectacularly beautiful and complex. much like the people that we are, like the lives we live, and the countries and continents we inhabit. This is a life and a continent that cannot be painted with a broad stroke. And it isn’t. Arensen’s stories, instead, are threaded with themes of humour, culture, spirituality, sorrow, knowledge, and wisdom.

This anthology, these stories, provides snippets and snapshots of a patchwork life, colourful, pieces unique and wonderful, each with a pattern and shade of their own.

My sophomore self, with a slightly more subtle enthusiasm, did end up doing what he did (or at least one of the things he did—it was a start). I signed up for his study-abroad program, a program he founded and directed for many years, in Tanzania. And on our first full day, he shared with his cohort of students this Anglican catechism: “What is the chief end of man? To glorify God and enjoy Him forever.” This is something Arensen, and his book, embodies. And it is this I hope to do—and be.

This is a book you ought to read, and a man you ought to know.

Rachel Woodworth is a Class of 2015 Houghton Alum.

Categories
Opinions

Don’t Fear the Unknown

I have never been much of a details person. I prefer the unplanned: the wide-open opportunity of possibility, the space for surprise, and the room for wonder. I like the ticket, the destination, and a nodded, smiling, “yes.” I value openness, willingness, and flexibility. I value uncertainty. Is this the self-defensive anthem—a desperate, blind comfort—of a senior approaching graduation? Maybe—but maybe it is more than that. This, perhaps, may be considered as less of an expression of passivity, an aversion to commitment, and more of an active and intentional posturing. Its focus is on personhood, not plans. I’m packing light: my Nalgene is tucked and buckled into the side of my backpack and my passport and some cash are hidden in an inner pocket. The necessities are accounted for and the burden is light. I’m anticipating—I’m ready—to pick up and go, to nod a smiling “yes”, when God, when opportunity, says “Let’s go.”

RachelWoodworthWhen I arrived at Houghton, my smile was so wide, so expectant, that it was silly. I was buzzing, brimming, with curiosity.  I came with questions and expected to find answers; came with problems, confusions, and frustrations and I expected to find solutions. I said “yes” to opportunity after strange and sometimes serendipitous opportunity—“yes” to Journey’s End Tutoring, to Gospel Choir (though that was soon followed by a “no” when I realized my voice would be heard rather than smoothly and quietly blended with the others), to a One Missions Society (OMS) missions retreat in Indiana with a van full of strangers, to symposiums and Deacon Board meetings. Another “yes” took me to an Interfaith Conference in Kentucky where I was overwhelmed with newness, diversity, and strange, staggering, uncertainty. I spent an October break in the Adirondack Mountains and felt fantastically small, quiet, and happy: a feeling that would return in Tanzania through dwelling in the glory of the unfamiliar and the challenge of the context of close community. I marched through the streets of New York, calling for climate justice. My schedule and person have been full, to the brim and beyond, of new ideas, interactions, conversations, and questions—always questions.

My worldview, ambitions, values, and purpose have not compacted or narrowed focus in my four years at Houghton. No, they have been stretched, sometimes felt torn, into something much larger than I ever anticipated. The curious, but order seeking, freshman version of myself has faded and grown into something, someone, quite different.  My more black-and-white world has become gray, in the most beautiful sense. There is magic and mystery in the gray—in that misty blanket of fog. In this space, I’ve had to dismiss the comfort, safety, and satisfaction of the familiar. The gray settles over the similar, disguises the readily recognizable: I’ve learned to lean into the unknown, straining my eyes to see through and beyond the immediate and obvious. Here in the gray, my position is not clear. My placement does not yet have a title or a job description. I am in the here and not-quite-yet. Still gray, still fluid, is the Kingdom of God.

There is value in transience—in this uncertain limbo. This, maybe, is glorified indecisiveness. I’ve romanticized the “not knowing” and masked it as some grand adventure. Questions and uncertainty, though, have this inherent vulnerability. They are not secure. The territory they occupy is sometimes frightening, often in marked contrast to a savings-driven, career-oriented, fast-paced society. I take comfort in this: my tiny story is nested in a much larger narrative. There’s a bigger picture, a mosaic, divinely ordered. I see the scattered, lopsided pieces. I feel their wonky edges. I choose to remain faithful to the process, the working together of a divine vision, not panicked by the disorder.

My options are open and my plans are imperfect, uncertain. They may go awry—they already have. I think of miscalculated travel and a night spent in McDonalds. I think of an early morning in Tanzania, blundering through brush and darkness, losing and finding the path again, racing the rising of the sun. I remember hurrying to the top of the hill, struggling to catch my breath, and clambering on to a rock just as the sun was rising. There was God, peeking over the mountains, smiling, spilling light across the valley. We made it—we’ll make it.

Categories
Opinions

Walking on Water

This New Year, I didn’t want party blowers or noisemakers or confetti.  I didn’t want countdowns or parties. I wanted real quiet, real rest, real time to intentionally think, reflect, and acknowledge the ending of 2013 and the beginning of 2014. I wanted to dwell in the transition, in the momentary suspension, in the weightless limbo, in the passage from one year to the next. I wanted to neatly gather its pages—its moments, musings, feelings—and lay my hand on top of the stack, the year in its entirety, and sigh a long, contented sigh. Bind it in reflection and in prayer, longing to be engaged in my living, aware of my being, and conscious of its changing and directing—intolerant of a passive blur of a life.

chantingThere I was, chanting choice and carrying a banner for individual agency, convinced of my ability to accept, reject, create or reform my character; my personhood.

Then I started thinking about my year: the humbling, the self-confrontation of weaknesses, the uncertainties. And though anyone who is familiar with me knows that my approach to life is of the smell-the-roses-wind-blown variety, this year challenged me. It challenged my flexibility, my control. It was a year of travel, of transitions. Those have a way of confronting and changing you. My coming and going quietly, gradually, altered me and I am still processing how that is.

A semester in Tanzania expanded the classroom walls, took biology to villages, to reserves; took lecture to living. In Ruaha Game Park, this sense of smallness, of humility, was absolute. Driving through the savannah on the way back to the lodge, Bon Iver’s “Holocene” playing in my ears (“And at once I knew I was not magnificent/…and I could see for miles and miles and miles”), I started to sense the bigness of the landscape and the smallness of me—nature’s power and my weakness. The savannah just seemed even more immense than it had minutes before: miles and miles and miles of dry grass and bush, Acacias and enormous Baobabs, stretched, reached, out my window and beyond, bowing to mountains in the distance—their peaks, so far that their greens gave way to blues, were an outline of the endless scene that spread out before me. And I felt small. I thought, “here, I’m a minority. Here, I stumble over language. Here, my thinking and my values are often not the norm. I look different, act differently, and think differently.” On the game drive earlier that day, perched on top of the truck (which we affectionately, and inexplicably, called The Aardvark), we passed a bull elephant—an angry one. He trumpeted, he tore at leaves and branches, and he stomped his feet. His power was visible and incredible. If he had carried out his charges I, almost eye-to-eye level with him, would have been totally helpless. My lack of control was stark—nature did not, does not, and should not bend at my will. May I come to terms with my smallness, I told myself. May I let it breed humility in me. And may it change my perspective—one shaped by the West, the great believer in power, in independence, in control, in the accumulation of wealth and in the fostering of safety, security, comfort, and luxury: the West who makes nature bend at its will; the West who, in its industriousness, efficiency, and power—forgets its smallness and loses touch with the reality, and beauty, of vulnerability. “Too much power, too little/knowledge,” Wendell Berry writes. And I think he is right…there is some truth, some value, in being a minority—in being okay with smallness.

Humility and a willingness to relinquish control: these, I’m realizing, need to be repeated in my head and practiced in my living. They are especially necessary attitudes to carry into the field of international development I’m moving towards, a field that is constantly contested: a field that is a battleground for cynicism.

Development—this season of life—feels like walking on water.

And so, recognizing the limit of my reason, my critical thinking, my abilities, my knowing, I throw my legs over the boat. I step on to a sea. I’m tiny, and things are about to get risky, messy, and uncomfortable. Trusting that I have a role to play in God’s redemptive plan, unfolding since The Garden, I move towards Jesus, His arms outstretched, His lips moving, saying, “Yes, come.”

Categories
Arts

Recommended Reads: Jon Arensen’s “The Red Pelican”

Jon Arensen is as masterful a storyteller as he is a lecturer. As a freshman, I recall leaving his classroom and thinking, “I want to do what he does”. This is what his stories do: they inspire. In the pages of his most recent book, The Red Pelican, (the third of Arensen’s “Sudan Trilogy”) are the stories of Dick Lyth and his fifteen years spent in Sudan, a collection of tales that hold tragedy and thrill, faith and culture, peace and war. As the pages turn he’ll have you saying, “I want to do what he does”.

Courtesy of twitter.com
Courtesy of twitter.com

In 1939, Dick Lyth graduated from Oxford and moved to southern Sudan as a young man of 21 years, full of enthusiasm for mission and for adventure. Shortly after his arrival, WWII began. Lyth enlisted and was drafted into the Sudan Defense Force. He finished training as a Major and 120 local men were placed under his command. Posted to a remote and harsh corner of the country, Lyth was given a brief but serious task: to secure the Ethiopian border by holding the Italians at bay and thereby cutting off their access to the precious Nile. This assignment meant guerrilla warfare. In the ensuing months, Lyth and his small band of men, although outnumbered and pushed to every limit, were successful owing greatly to their strength, innovation, and luck. However this victory was not without loss—a loss you feel as you read as Lyth takes aim at his first human target. At the conclusion of the war, Lyth’s role and title changes from Major to District Commissioner, from defender to peace builder. As an overseer of an expansive Murle region, Lyth carried out his work in many ways; as a missionary, administrator, linguist, anthropologist, surveyor, husband, and father. The Murle people named him Kemerbong—Red Pelican; peacemaker. His coworkers endearingly called him the “Commissionary”—well-loved commissioner and missionary. He was an ever-adventurer, ever-seeker, and ever-learner with steadfast faith and commitment—characteristics attested to in his personal writing: “I am loving this life, so free and so essentially positive…I am out adventuring with God…I am His, absolutely and forever. His to use or not to use…I will laugh with Him and I will weep with Him. Above all and in all and through all I will delight to do His will forever and ever”.

Engrossing and engaging, The Red Pelican will draw you in and turn you out, outward to the longing for a life and story far bigger than the conventional, the safe, the mediocre, or the comfortable. Arensen, near the end of the book, describes Lyth’s evening ritual: swimming in the Akobo River. Dick would dive underwater and grab the village boys’ legs, pretending to be a crocodile—“the game was made even more exciting because of the real crocodiles in the river”. I want to live where the crocodiles nibble my toes; to choose a life of adventure and of learning, not only for myself and for my gain, but for a better and deeper understanding of the world; for the seeking, finding, and displaying of God’s glory… available for Him “to use or not to use”. Intercultural Majors, pick up this book and read it. Read and learn as Lyth navigates the territory of cross cultural sensitivity, immersion, and conflict. Heck, whatever your major—pick up this book and read it. Embark on Lyth’s adventure, then go and embark on your own.