An Awareness of Him

We entered, suddenly, into a sacred moment.

But actually, every moment is sacred—it has more to do with our sudden awareness of something beyond ourselves.

Z., a regular attender at the Little Darda Church, has been getting sicker over the last few months.  A few days ago, she returned home after  a couple of weeks in the hospital.  Weak and in pain, she is having trouble moving around her house, her asthma making her sound  like she is breathing underwater.

“I am throwing up everything I eat except a little bread with some jam on it,” she told us after we stopped by to check on her.

Z. hasn’t been baptized—and although she faithfully attends church every Sunday, she has rarely expressed what she thinks in terms of faith or God. Like many adults in our church, her inability to read makes it difficult for her to access the Bible.

But as we sat around her fragile body, she began to speak to us.

“God is for us and not against us.  He is our father and is taking care of me even though I am sick.  We are in his hands and we are safe with him. He is our father and our healer.”

I caught my breath—could I be understanding this correctly?  This was not someone who was trying to impress us or give us pat answers, although some of what she was saying came from songs or concepts that we had presented in church.

These were words with power—spoken by someone who was and had been suffering—words that testified and exhorted, words that portrayed a simple yet deep faith.

Yesterday in the Little Darda Church, it felt like one of those days—missing keys, late starts, confusing stories, and minor drama.    We had announced the previous week that we were handing out food packages—and this week the church had a sudden surplus of people.

During the song part of the service, there was a loud POP, which startled everyone and caused three men to run outside to investigate. I personally thought someone had thrown a rock at the window, but we never got to the bottom of it.

After church, we drove a young girl home who had recently started coming to church.

“When that noise happened,” she said, “I saw a vision of Jesus standing in fire in the middle of the church. I was afraid and my heart is still beating really fast!”

She did look shaken—and so we tried to help her process what she had seen and what that meant.

By this point in my experience, hearing Roma talk about such an event is nothing new or shocking. God seems to speak frequently through dreams and visions to the Roma in order to testify, exhort, or encourage.

Whatever this young girl actually saw, she was moved into a sudden awareness—the reality that Jesus is among us.

A few weeks ago, I wrote  that the leadership of the Little Darda Church was   discouraged and frustrated, and that consequently we had decided to take a pauza from many of our programs in order to pray and seek God.

Since then, there have been no big revelations, or masses coming to Christ, or disciples maturing overnight.  However, there have been a few of these glimpses, a subtle quickening of awareness, that God is active in our midst.

“I am not afraid to die,” Z. said, “because my Father is waiting for me and he is not going to trick me—I will be with him.”

Adventures in Velebit

Oh fairy, fairy of Velebit

The pride of our nation,

Your glory is precious to us,

Croats delight in you.

from ‘Vila Velebita’, a Croatian folk song

Recently,  a friend and I embarked on a five day adventure into one of Croatia’s largest and wildest mountain ranges stretching parallel to the Adriatic sea: Velebit, part of the Dinaric Alps.  An old Croatian folk song calls Velebit the “haunt of fairies.” One writer describes it as “a strangely beautiful place, its wind-scoured heights characterized by areas of bizarrely sculpted and weathered rock, studded with thickets of dwarf mountain pine, and pierced by some of the deepest sinkholes in the world” (Rudolph Abraham).

Indeed, some of those eery sinkholes brought a certain tremble to our legs as we peered into the fathomless depths.

The whole trek is nine days long; but in five days we drank in a healthy dose of Velebit.  It wasn’t just the stunning scenery we enjoyed, but also Croatia’s “hiking culture,” which we encountered in the huts and along the trail.

“You are hiking alone?” the man asked disbelievingly, and then proceeded to ask his hiking troupe if they could adopt us for the next few days, although we assured him we were fine.  This proved to be a common question for two women hiking alone for five days, and the query was often immediately followed by gifts of rakija(Balkan spirits) and many varieties of snacks and foods.

“This rakija is 20 years old and made by my grandfather,” one young Slovenian man told us on top of Velebit’s highest peak.

“Take the bananas, take them!” another man urged although we were finishing our trip and they were just starting out.

“This is the most hospitable culture ever,” my American friend observed after we were fed fire-roasted slabs of pork over fresh bread deep in the mountains.

And of course the food was just the beginning. On our third night, we encountered the same group of men out for three days who, as they told me after I jokingly asked where the women were, “just needed some guy time.” Our feast over the open fire ended with boisterous songs around the campfire.  At their special request, I found myself belting one of the few  Country Western songs I know (complete with a wanna-be Southern twang).  Croatia is one of the few countries that truly appreciate my attempted Southern accent.

One day, we stumbled out of the mountains onto the sweltering hot, never-ending plain of Veliko Rujno only to encounter hundreds of people celebrating the holiday of Velika Gospa (Feast of the Assumption).   Locals pilgrimage to this location where there is a small church for a special Mass and a big picnic afterwards.  Throwing our too-heavy backpacks on the ground, I poured the refreshing water from the well by the church over my head and watched the festivities.

We were warned repeatedly about bears and wolves—but no one who warned us (I questioned everyone) had every personally seen a bear or wolf in the wilderness.  However, we were chased by an intimidating (their horns did not look friendly) group of female cows who followed us, braying repeatedly, over a narrow trail on the side of a hill.

Set amidst the wild peace of Velebit is a sad reminder of Croatia’s recent past: one day our trail led us through areas   still strewn with landmines and old military bunkers from the 1990s war.  Although the map and the occasional warning sign kept us abreast of their general areas, I was giddily conscious of keeping on the right trail.

Our last night we decided to sleep out of the hut and under the stars; and it was this night that we were visited by the Bura, a powerful, gale force wind that blows over the mountains and onto the Adriatic.  Following its persuasive bluster, the next day we hiked out and were swimming in the Adriatic sea by mid-afternoon.