The Empty Pot
by J. Andrew Cole
"Though the fig tree does not bud and there are no grapes on the vines, though the olive crop fails and the fields produce no food, though there are no sheep in the pen and no cattle in the stalls, yet I will rejoice in the Lord, I will be joyful in God my Savior." Hab. 3:17, 18
A four-foot trail of yellow corn meal, stretched across the gray asphalt, marked a significant shift in the history of Angola. The flour, being undisturbed, was a sign that "the time of hunger" had passed. During the hunger, men, women and children would have struggled and fought over any small amount of food, even a sprinkling of flour upon a dusty pavement.
The "time of hunger" began during a nine-month siege of Kuito in 1992 and 1993. The siege was a military offensive of the UNITA guerrillas aimed at driving out the communist backed MPLA troops holding the city. Four years later, my father and I visited Angola for the first time in many years. Our host was the pastor of the Brethren Christian Church. The impact of the war was shocking, for the central highlands of Angola where Kuito is located, were to us home.
A Return Home
Dad had clearly defined goals regarding our visit. He was seeking people he had known. As a young man he worked among the Ovimbundu, but because of the demands of family, along with threats of civil war, his active ministry in Africa had been cut short. Now, before he becomes "old", he told me, he wanted to return to find friends that were still living, or perhaps to encourage their children.I was born in Angola, and now after thirty years, I was returning for the first time. My own objectives were less clearly defined than Dad's. I hoped to support Dad, I expected to learn something from him, and, if I was lucky I hoped to have memories from childhood reawakened. All of these objectives were achieved. What I had not expected was a better appreciation of the sustaining significance of a transcendent life purpose.
Well known research on the survivors of the death camps during World War II1 revealed that the survival rate was better among those individuals who felt they had a meaningful purpose to fulfill. Psychologists and psychoanalysts, however, have never been so confident in defining what purpose human beings ought to fulfill. My time in Kuito, convinced me that the element that can maintain morale and a general sense of well-being during times of profound chaos and destruction is the liberal service to others. It has become clear to me that it is precisely the same thing that all of us need: a sense of meaning beyond the acquisition of basic needs, the sense of a truly significant life purpose which can be discovered most profoundly in serving the most vulnerable.
The suffering in Kuito caused by terrible fighting between rival political parties was shocking in scope, yet few in the West paid attention. Because of the late Princess Di's campaign against anti-personal mines, some had become more aware of the land of "one-legged men." (There are actually as many mutilated women and children as men.) But apart from those with missionary or mercenary zeal, few seem interested in Angola. The casualties of mines buried in the gardens and cornfields of unsuspecting subsistence farmers, have no impact upon the global economy and thus causes little stir among the greater powers. This lack of concern for those whom have nothing to contribute to us materially, has contributed more significantly to the erosion of Western culture than any other factor.
But this story is not primarily about war, economics or a critique of Western culture. In Kuito, there was an extremely marked material impoverishment, but the simultaneous presence of an extraordinary vitality that seemed to flourish like the daffodils in spring. Amidst the battle-worn and destitute people, a vigor that may not be immediately apparent to an eye focused only on the horrors of war (or the external beauties of Africa) was strikingly evident. Yet it was the war that made the first impression.
Upon arriving in Kuito, it was a numbing cloud that first settled over me as I tried to comprehend the sights. The picturesque Portuguese settlement I vaguely remembered now resembled a bombed out city from the World War era. Buildings of magnificent European architecture now looked like the filming props for "Combat," an old black and white TV show. People living in these buildings were not actors, however, they were residents; they seemed oblivious of the dangers of unsecured concrete slabs that teetered three and four stories high. What had happened to the charm of this settlement abandoned by the Portuguese when Angola was given independence? Only Afghanistan compares in my minds eye with the destruction of Angola.
For some time I thought my childhood memory must have played tricks on me, exaggerating the former glories of this small provincial town. But my memories were verified by the partially buried remnants of cobblestone arranged in mosaic depictions of African life. The fragments of architectural detailing along the rooflines that had managed to survive, and the waterless remains of gardens at the city's center all spoke of a beauty faded by neglect and irreparably damaged by war. Like an archeological sight, an old beauty lay buried beneath the rubble. Dad's grief was palpable. As he looked upon buildings, he remembered in his youth; his head shook slowly back and forth. He looked old to me, perhaps for the first time.
We were both cheered by the Africans that recognized "Nala Kole." I took comfort in Dad's perspective. He repeatedly explained to those we met that, "We have not come to look at these broken down buildings. We have come to be with people." The destruction, however, had forceful impact.
Signs of War
The pastor, our host, had been pointing to flour that must have spilled out of someone's carelessly sealed flour sack. I would see many young girls, barely older than my own eight-year-old daughter Rachel burdened with immense sacks of flour drooping over their heads. They seemed oblivious to the scars of war as they carried the enormous bags to and from the market. The spent shell casings pressed into the heat softened asphalt, the scarred walls pockmarked by countless rounds of automatic fire were noticed only by Kuito's visitors.Kuito is nestled in the undulating plateau strategically located in the heart of Angola. From this location, Soviet-built midges can easily strike at any enemy stronghold within thirty short minutes. For this military advantage, the guerrillas wanted Kuito. By encircling her, in an ever-tightening noose, they hoped to starve out the communist troops.
The rope began to tighten twenty days before Christmas, 1992, as the first rounds of mortar fire were lobbed into the city. These warning shots were followed by a day of silence and a flurry of leaflets encouraging rebel sympathizers to flee. On 7 December, the mortars resumed their deadly pillage. Daily, for the next nine months, four hundred explosive rounds canvassed predominantly residential areas, while midges shrieked above the crumbling rooftops trying to rake out the invading guerrillas.
As we walked through the aftermath of this blood letting, many questions haunted me. "How had these people survived?" The litany of the dead seemed endless. My dearest boyhood chum, Mordecai, dead by a sniper's bullet; remaining, are his wife and two children. His father? Dead. During a lull in the fighting, this unusually kind man had decided to slip into the bush back to the mission that had been home to us. What danger could there have been, he was an old man? His remains have never been found. I cannot at this moment reflect upon other names beyond these, for a grief seems to overtake me. Lest I fall to overwhelming anguish, let me return to more general comments.
Life Among the Ruins
Many of those we met displayed the vacant expressions typical of those diagnosed with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. In the Sunday Church service, as I was able to survey the crowd, those who remained traumatized could be easily identified. Unsmiling. Unresponsive. Wooded in appearance. The evidence of trauma was not surprising given the conditions we were seeing in the city around us. What was surprising was the vigor displayed.Abraham Maslow predicted that emotional life could not proceed its upward evolution without the more basic safisfactions of food and shelter. Here in Kuito, there was not one building untouched by an explosive metal drenching. Yet we found among these gaunt and hungry victims people with amazing creativity and industry. Like a shoot growing out of a dry stump, there were tangible signs of life pulsating through this bomb crater.
Following a pattern established by the missionaries, the church had continued to minister to the spirit, the body and the mind. To tend to the spirit, a church building was in progress. The building had begun with the roof so that services could be held during the rainy season; walls were being gradually built up as bricks could be secured.
To tend to the body, a pharmacy had been constructed. The stock of medical supplies was meager, perhaps twenty-five small bottles. But there were caring people willing to try to help those who elected to consult with a medic rather than a witch doctor.
To tend to the mind, a school had been organized. There were no books, and three of the four classrooms had no desks, only stones for the students to sit on, but there were four hundred children in attendance.
From a material perspective, all of these accomplishments looked pitiful. How can a building with a tin roof and no walls function as a church? How can an overcrowded school with no desks or school supplies help children read and write? How can a small medicine cabinet, not larger than the one in which I store my shaving cream, be called a "clinic?" Yet the industriousness of these people was astonishing; they gave priority, not to their own comforts, but to the well-being of the community. Living in small hovels, they were energetically building up the community even though the possibility of war threatened to destroy anything they built.
The lives of these materially impoverished people planted in me the need to reconsider the nature of the problems we in the West try to address. We are inclined to see the resources of the poor exclusively in terms of their physical assets. In so doing, we have inadvertently hurt them. By focusing excessively upon their miseries, we have failed to recognize and respond to their extraordinary capacities and resourcefulness. A challenge for those who wish to contribute to humanity is to begin to see assets where none appear to exist, and conversely, to recognize the poverty where wealth seems to abound.
A Time of Fear
I gradually learned how the pastor, his wife, four natural and two adopted children survived the physical mêlée of bombardment. Along with a number of neighbors, they had survived in an enormous foxhole.The hideaway had been carved out from under the concrete slab of the former missionary home in which we were staying. The entry had been covered with a mattress--by the look of it, it may have been the foam pad Dad had been sleeping on during our visit. (I wondered, on one occasion when he arose earlier than normal, if bed bugs had disturbed his sleep!) The pastor promised to show me the place, but it would not be until a year later that he got around to it. The memory of it seemed to be an unwelcome visitor he wished not to entertain as it continued to evoke profound pain.
How did he spend his time in this protective den? He translated a book from Portuguese into Umbundu, titled "Why do Christians Suffer?" For him, it was not an academic question, and I am not sure he has yet gained a satisfactory answer. But it is not for those in war to philosophize about suffering. The fear was especially intense when the mortars fell silent. In the quiet, interrupted by the occasional pop of rifle fire, the enemy could be creeping closer and closer. It was especially dangerous when hunger and thirst drove them into the bullet-riddled streets. Soldiers and civilians alike fought over bundles of food dropped into the city by government helicopters. The fight turned into an "every man for himself" struggle. Flour, even a cup full lying on a dusty pavement, was something to kill for.
An Empty Pot
During one of our meals with the pastor, he explained how food eventually ran out. As he was reaching for the pot of soup before us, he hesitated before lifting the lid. Then he laughed. He was reminded of a previous time. During the time of hunger, after one of their morning meals, there was no food left in the pantry and no prospects to purchase more. The pastor recalled that after breakfast, rather than washing the bowl, as was custom, the pot was covered and left in the center of the table. They had not lost hope. They expected that God would provide for their need by filling the pot with food. During a time of drought in Israel, had not God filled the widow's jar with flour and oil (I Kings 17:14)? Didn't Christ say that the Father knows of our need (Matthew 6:25-27)? Surely God could multiply the food in the pot in view of their need.As the time for their next meal arrived, the hungry group prepared themselves as customay. They gathered around the table for the prayer. As I tried to imagine the scene, the prayer, I thought, must have been a long one. During the meals we had with the pastor, his prayers were always long, but they never seemed to drag on. Even though I could not understand all his words, the effect was powerful and immediate. I had the impression that God was more tangible to this man than he was to me. He seemed to see God as awesome and terrifying, someone to fear, perhaps a fear heightened by the sound of thundering mortars shells ringing in his ears. At the same time, he seemed to see God as someone who is gentle and kind, someone into whose hands one can place oneself for safe keeping. As he tried to describe the scene, I tried to put myself in the situation adding details in my imagination based on what I observed about him, now three years later. He was confident that God would provide for their hunger. But to his dismay, upon lifting the lid, it was empty--just as empty as it had been left!
In recollecting the scene for his Western visitors, he laughed, as though to reassure himself. He reached toward the pot before us for a second helping. As he retold the story, I felt strangely, as though it would have been good had I experienced a similar fortune. I felt I had missed something. Something horrible, yes, but also something in which I might have gained a better vision of life. A man who has tasted real need can feel tremendous gratitude for even a single plate of food. Awareness of genuine need is an element of life that we in the West are denied by virtue of the abundance of what we have; these rich blessings may deny the opportunity for genuine gratitude.
When God Seems Absent
There are certain times of crisis when we are deeply impressed by the presence of God. There are other times when God seems nowhere to be seen. A friend of mine told me that as she sat by her eight year old son's deathbed (he was dying of heart disease), she was keenly aware and greatly comforted by a sense that God was "with me in the hospital room." Another friend explained that when she heard the news of her husband's tragic death, she felt "drenched in peace." Yet there are also times when God's outstretched hand seems to have been withdrawn, he seems to have turned his back. My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? We may ask. Why are you so far from saving me, so far from the words of my groanings?During periods when God seems silent, we may try to reassure ourselves in various ways. We may turn to a Psalm for comfort. Or we may search our heart for an alienating sin. When we are at our worst, we may attack others believing they are the source of our distress. To add to the suffering, well-meaning friends, like Job's, may append our torment by adding unwelcome judgments. Sometimes we are jarred out of our angst. At other times darkness seems to linger and nothing helps. Like an impenetrable dark curtain, aloneness blackens out the light of hope. God is silent. He seems to just stand there and stare. It is during these times that suffering is most profound.
I asked the pastor what he did when he realized that there would be no food. There was no hesitancy in his reply, "We prayed; we thanked God for the hunger." He shrugged as he explained this and ladled out steaming potato soup. He took great care in this ordinary chore, ladling soup. As he looked into the steaming broth, my own hunger evaporated. I was humbled by the transcendent vision of the man. He thanked God for his hunger!
It would make a great missionary story to say that after giving thanks a second time, a knock came to the door-- a timely food basket. It didn't happen that way. That night they went hungry, and for months sustained themselves like animals by eating the leaves and bark from trees.
What is Seen and Unseen
How had they survived this brutal time? The Apostle Paul had first hand experience with suffering. He was, ". . . hard pressed on every side, but not crushed; perplexed, but not in despair; persecuted, but not abandoned; struck down, but not destroyed (2 Cor. 4:8)." How was he able to maintain this extraordinary perspective in the face of his suffering? He wrote that, ". . . we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen (2 Cor. 4:18)." What exactly did he mean by that? The Apostle was unreservedly devoted to a life of service convinced that he was serving a transcendent purpose and that regardless of the outward appearances, there was an invisible Presence ever near.Visitors to Africa rapidly become conscious of the contrast between life here in America and life in Africa. We have a material abundance. Occasionally I'm convinced we might be a bit richer if we faced the testing of an empty pot. Such testing might drive us to see that which is unseen.
I have beside me a simple glass of water. It sparkles in the mellow fall sun. I don't worry for a moment that it may be undrinkable because of invisible parasites. The condition of drinking water is a constant source of concern in Africa. Neither do I fear that there will be an empty refrigerator, or a bare cupboard. But I wonder about my own impoverishment. Does the abundance that surrounds me block awareness of the unseen and eternal? And even more painful to consider: to what extent do my commitments reflect a transcendent purpose?
I have begun to drink water without ice. Withholding the small and insignificant pleasure reminds me that there may be greater blessing in what I am denied--it may focus attention on what is unseen, what is eternal. And those small things, things that once had no meaning, suddenly take on meaning. A single meal. A cup of water. All objects of tremendous gratitude.
"...we do not lose heart. Though outwardly we are wasting away, yet inwardly we are being renewed day by day. For our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all. So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen. For what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal." II Corinthians 4:16-18
________________________1 Frankl, Viktor E., "Experiences in a Concentration Camp." Jewish Heritage, XI (1968).
_____________________ "Man in Search of Meaning." Widening Horizons (Rockford College), (1972).