Around the World in 18 Days

It is difficult to pinpoint what I love about travel. Perhaps it is the fact that no matter how many places you visit, there will always be new places to go or else something you haven’t seen at a previously visited location. There is also the aspect of meeting new people that fascinates me (says the introvert). The challenge of adjusting to a different way of doing things or thinking about things is also interesting. This process can be pleasant, and sometimes painful, but you can hardly walk away unscathed by what you experience during an expedition.

This month I bought a ticket to China. I have been telling my friends about it, and have found myself saying things like “I’m nervous about going to the airport in Beijing” or “I’m nervous about [insert whatever here].” It isn’t too much of a surprise that I’m saying these things.  I’ve heard similar things come out of my mouth right before venturing to other places. When I first went to Ireland I was concerned about living a whole year away from my family and friends, and when I first went to Switzerland I didn’t know if I would be able to find the proper train to get on, and when I went to Colombia I was anxious about Bogota being the Kidnapping Capital of the world (among other things). I am now realizing that I’m not just “nervous” about these things; I’m voicing fears. "Fears that I don’t totally want to admit are fears.

I just recently finished reading Numbers and Deuteronomy . The Israelites had plenty of fears, and usually didn’t mind voicing them. “You led us out here to die” they told Moses. “We’re going to starve to death; we’re thirsty! What I’d give for a good meal of leeks!" There was a lot going on with those folk. The fact that Numbers records an 11 day journey taking 40 years is quite sobering (I hope my journey to China just takes 18 days, as planned!). And then, as you probably know most of the Israelites still didn’t REALLY get it, and ended up dying in that sandy wasteland- except for Caleb and Joshua. And then what mighty warriors they turned out to be! I think it’s interesting how Joshua’s career started out. God told Moses to tell Joshua not to be afraid but to be courageous, and then God told Joshua that directly on several occasions, and then later on Josh was able to exhort the rest of the Israel not to be afraid, but to be courageous. What a journey for that man! What a kind of an epic journey for the rest of the nation! To finally go in and conquer the land; THEIR LAND, and to joyfully claim it. Now that's the kind of expedition I'm talking about- one that leaves the imprints of indelible ink.

Deut 5:29 Oh that they had such a heart in them, that they would fear Me, and keep all My commandments always, that it may be well with them and with their sons forever!

Dialog With a Six Year Old

He came to his lesson last Saturday with a beautifully wrapped present. The tri-colored bow was ingeniously twisted at the top, and the paper of the gift bag shouted things out at me, like “Joy! Joy! Joy!” and “Merry Christmas!” I uttered my surprise at the lovely gift, and let out an “Ooh!” and “Ahh!” as I lifted out the chocolate covered pretzels and a bottle of foamy soap- the kind whose delicious scent lingers on your hands long after you’ve washed them. After I discovered what was in the bag he explained the gift “Well, I didn’t buy it. My mom bought it, and then she gave it to me so I could give it to you… I have Eight Dollars!” I smiled at his frankness; not every kid gives credit where credit is due.

We worked on some Christmas music. Before we started, he protested: “I can’t do this! I don’t know how to play on the E string, or how to use my 4^th finger yet!” I assured him that he could play the song I had in mind for him, and flipped to one that was at his level. His eagerness to be where his older sister is on the violin shines through during every lesson.

As he swings his feet back and forth in his chair he asks “How old do you have to be before you can be a violin instructor?” I told him there wasn’t really a certain age that you had to reach to start teaching, but if he kept playing he would be ready in no time. “You know what?” he said “When I’m a teenager you’ll be a grandma!” I eagerly tried to adjust his math calculations by explaining that I would be in my thirties when he becomes a teenager... but I can understand how 7 years would seem like an infinite span of time for a 6 year old.

Getting this boy to focus on his assigned music is tricky. The music ahead of what we are working on is always much more tantalizing to practice than on what is assigned on a weekly basis. As I wrapped up Saturday’s music lesson he said “Oh yeah, by the way, do you recognize this?” He then proceeded to play a few measures of Ode to Joy from memory. I was surprised; impressed that he was working on something more advanced than what we were struggling to play through just a few minutes earlier. I replied “Yes. Yes I do!” and secretly thought: “Will wonders never cease?”

Isaac

I’m not sure what I would do if I found myself on an altar, with my father’s hand wrapped around the handle of a knife ready to slit my throat. But that is exactly the predicament Isaac found himself in. Let’s say it is a safe bet that Isaac knew what was going on. He knew they had not arrived at that mountain carrying a lamb (or any other four legged animal). He knew the fire was pipin’ hot ready to go! He knew what usually took place on top of carefully stacked stones. But there seems to be something missing from the story. The chapter doesn’t give any detail of a dramatic struggle between Isaac and his father Abraham. It just says that Abraham bound Isaac. Does anybody else find this strange? I mean, Abraham was no spring chicken, and Isaac was what, a teenager? I’ve seen plenty of 2 year olds quickly outdistance their parents, I’m sure Isaac could have …but… he didn’t. All we know is that his father bound him, and that Isaac would have been a goner had it not been for the LORD’s intervention: an angel who spoke and staid Abraham’s outstretched hand.

I wonder what the walk back down the mountain was like. I wonder if Isaac resented being bound and almost killed; if dinner conversation was reduced to “Please pass the salt.” Or maybe he was impressed that his father withheld nothing from God. Nothing… not even him! Not even his son whom he loved.

More Notebook Notes

In the midst of my notebook sorting and purging, I came across a few quotations that made an impact on me several years ago. Here is one by Amy Carmichael from her book Thou Givest... They gather:

God- let me be aware,
Stab my soul fiercly with another's pain;
Let me walk, seeing horror and stain;
Let my hands, groping, find other hands.
Give me the heart that divines and understands-
Give me the courage, wounded, to fight;
Flood me with knowledge, drench me with light.

Here is a quotation from C.S. Lewis from the same notebook:

...behind all asceticism the thought should be, "Who will trust us with the true wealth if we cannot be trusted even with the wealth that perishes? Who will trust me with a spiritual body if I cannot control even an earthly body? These small and perishable bodies we now have were given to us as ponies are given to schoolboys. We must learn to manage; not that we may someday be free of horses altogether but that someday we may ride bareback, confident, and rejoicing, those greater mounts, those winged, shining and world-shaking horses which perhaps even now expect us with impatience, pawing and snorting in the King's stables. Not that the gallop would be of any value unless it were a gallop with the King; but how else- since He has retained His own Charger- should we accompany Him?"

High School Poetics

I have been digging through old notes and books from back when I was in High School. This process is part of a new effort to widdle down and condense what I own. Flipping through a few notebook, I came across some poetry that I wrote back in the day. It definately has a sober and darker tone to it. I don't think it was because I was perpetually depressed; I just think writing was a way for me to vent at the time and handle difficult experiences. Most of the poems are not particularly special or well written, but for what it's worth, here are two poems from the High School Heather. 

Silent Music

I shed the tears that weigh me down,
So that I can walk lonely halls.
Here, with head held high, I smile,
While frozen faces slip by, I sigh.

Is there an art to learning art?
I train my hands, but my eyes cannot focus.
I play music that most people cannot hear.
I hold my best on a platter,
only to look down and see that it is broken.
But I'll give what needs mending,
And I'll smile as they pass me by,
Here is where darkness cries for light,
And I'll carry a candle gladly.
I'll carry a candle gladly.

Here is another poem that was written shortly after a friend died in a car wreck.

Adrian

Black road
Silence
Crunching gravel
Tempo increases
Racing wheels
Laughing voices
Breathing souls
Spreading tree
Crunching metal
Brief cries
Burning flesh
Answering silence
17 years old
Peircing eyes
Man forever young
Mother's tears
Friends' disbelief
Silence
Black road      ...questions

Being Unbreakable and Getting Shot

I just recently watched the movie Unbreakable. I like this movie, but because of its serious treatment of the storyline and my preference for comedy, I’ve only watched it 2 or 3 times. The movie is slightly depressing to me, but I enjoy stories about super heroes. The cinematography is dark hued and cleverly manipulated; pieced together like illustrated panels found within a comic book.

One of my favorite scenes in this movie is fairly intense. The son of the main character wants to prove that his father is a super hero, and so one day he confronts his dad in the kitchen pointing a gun towards his chest. The boy believes that his father won’t die if he shoots him, thus proving to the world (and to his father) that there really is something ridiculously strong about him. Up until this point in the movie we have a hunch that the boy is right (to some extent), but we don’t want him to shoot his father because we don’t believe it will bounce off of his chest like a rubber bullet. In this nail biting scene the dad starts shouting at the boy to put the gun down- the mother as well is standing by helplessly, every-once-in-a-while saying a few words to try to diffuse the situation. Finally the dad says something to the effect of “I thought we were friends. Friends don’t shoot friends.” And then the mother affirms his words “Yeah, friends don’t shoot friends.” I’m not sure why this cracks me up every time, but I think it has something to do with the absurdity of the situation, and that the parents pick such an obvious truism to say to the boy. It helped calm down the situation, so I guess the son needed to hear it. In his head, the boy had thought through everything semi-rationally, but there was an obvious flaw in his thought process. If he was wrong about his theory, he would lose more than proof of his father’s super hero abilities; he would lose his father.

I believe, every now and again, we need to hear truisms. Sometimes they come in the form or clichés like “It’s not the end of the world.” or “Ya gotta get back on the horse.” or “If you keep doing that to your face it will stay that way.” And sometimes words just need to come in the form of truth. 100%, non-diluted unclichéd truth. We need reminded of the truth because we either forget it, or we haven’t really thought things through. We have somewhere, somehow, left something vital out of the equation.

I was reading 1 Peter this evening with a group of women in a Bible study, and in the middle of reading it dawned on me that it was really important for me to read some of those verses. They hit home. A little bit like bitter medicine; and at the same time, a little bit like a warm blanket. There wasn’t a gun in the room this evening, but I think I just got shot.  

Set on Pilate

Towards the end of summer, I had a taste of what it is like trying to pacify a mob. I was at Kansas Bible Camp, and acted out Pontius Pilate’s role during Christ’s trial. In order to disguise the fact that I’m the wrong gender to portray Pilate, I penciled in a quick unibrow on my face with eyeliner around 5:15 in the morning, and soon found myself staring down from a second story balcony, viewing a sea of bleary eyed High Schoolers, most of them with sheets haphazardly wrapped toga-style on top of their jammies. No decent trial should meet at this time of day!

Being Pilate, I had a few lines to shout to the mob. It seemed like I kept coming back to the fact that we were on the verge of killing an innocent man. Why would Barabbas look good in comparison to this man, Christ? The crowd shouted up to me “If this Man were not an evildoer, we would not have delivered Him up to you.” But the tone and look of the crowd did not necessarily reflect bunny-eyed innocence. What is the definition of “evildoer,” anyway? It was a situation so perplexing that I could see how it could make friends out of enemy rulers.  Another question that weighed on me:  I asked the camper who was portraying Christ, “What is truth?” I wonder if it occurred to the real Pilate that he had posed this question to Truth Himself. During the reenactment I washed my hands in front of the crowd, trying to show either them, or myself, that I was innocent of “this man’s blood;” I wonder if Pilate, in real life, had witnessed a tinge of red in the water, as torchlight flickered and played on the water’s surface.

It is common practice to act out Shakespearean plays in order to better understand what is taking place. I wouldn’t say the literary works are on the same plane, but I think it’s a worthwhile practice to apply to the Bible as well.

What's in a name?

When I think of the name Victoria, I picture the British monarch who reigned over England and Ireland during the latter part of the 1800s. This queen’s portrait comes to mind, as I envision her pursed lips and British reserve; surely anyone named Victoria would have to carry about the same grandeur and starchiness as this woman did… or so I thought, that is, up until the beginning of last week. It was last week when I met another Victoria at Grade School camp. This Victoria was a wild child, with loose unkempt curls, distracted, energetic grey eyes, and a resolve not to listen to adults. This Victoria wasn’t extremely regal, but she definitely livened up the atmosphere. Mid-week, as I was tuning up my violin to help lead music, she told me “Sometimes, when I hear music, I JUS’ GOTTA DANCE!” And dance she did, in the aisle, or in the small space in front of her seat! Maybe it was an outpouring of being a grade schooler who marches to her own beat, or maybe it came from being, as I learned, a Victoria. As I played the music up front, I was able to catch a glimpse of her abandonment- a lack of conscientiousness that she was in a fairly conservative place. It made me glad that the music I played helped give rise to this demonstration of brimming joy and merriment. I was also a little envious. I was too grown up; carried too many inhibitions; had too many reservations; I was too… well, British, to fully connect with the dancing fun. Perhaps, when everything is weighed out, my OWN name is more closely related to that 19^th Century British monarch.

Falling Trees

     A tree almost fell on my car. Nothing life-threatening; nothing while I was driving, but I almost parked in my usual spot at home last evening, and in the middle of the night a Bradford Pear tree in the front yard decided to split from the rest of the Bradford gang.

Actual Front Yard Footage

      To sweeten the situation, I almost, ALMOST, parked in my usual spot, but last-minute was like “Nah, I’ll pull up into the driveway instead.” I’m glad I did, because I might not have a side mirror or windshield in my car right now. I’m lucky, right? I want to bask in this thought for a while, because the last few days I’ve been feeling anything but lucky.

    

     I am guessing you know how these things go. Sometimes feelings of being less fortunate than others can sneak in stealthily, and sometimes hand-in-hand with the sulky tear-stained face of self-pity. Often these feelings come because of circumstances, or simply because we left the back door unguarded and wide open.

     I’ve been reading a few books for the literature class I’m teaching this Fall. One of them is The Horse and His Boy by C.S. Lewis. Reading through it again, I am reminded why it is one of my favorite books. I will try not to give it all away if you’ve never read it before, but one of my favorite parts in this book is when one of the main characters, Shasta, is riding through some fog on a horse, and he is thinking about how unfortunate he is. A majority of what he sees as misfortune were encounters with numerous lions throughout the long journey that he has just taken. In the middle of this fog he encounters Aslan, the Christ figure in the book (who also happens to be a lion), and the conversation he has with Aslan changes everything. Shasta realizes that he has not encountered many lions along the way, but one, Aslan, and all for important reasons. During this time Aslan walks with Shasta through the fog, and the next morning when the weather clears and Aslan is gone, the boy realizes he had been walking along the edge of a cliff, and it was the lion who kept him from careening over the edge. You could say he was a lucky boy, or you could simply say it was Aslan in his life all along.

I'm not going to attribute the tree limb missing my car to luck. I want to be as wise as Shasta, and realize that lions are not always what they appear to be. 

Journey Notes: Turkey and Ireland

Glendalough, Ireland

Amphitheater at Ephesus, Turkey

 

I just finished a 17 day trek to the Republic of Ireland, Northern Ireland and Turkey. When people ask about how a trip went, I acknowledge that they are not really asking about every step taken, and every life experience breathed. I also realize that most people expect more than a “good” in reply, so I thought I would take time to express a few highlights, intermingled with simple impressions of what I saw along the way. I’ll start with Turkey, because in my mind it retains the vivacity and freshness of a land newly perceived and traveled.

Istanbul is a big city. You could live there for years and still not realize the depths of this sprawling metropolis. While there, my friend Laura and I hit several touristy sites, like the Aya Sofya, the Blue Mosque, Topkapi Palace and the Grand Bazaar. We also biked around an island located South of the city via the Bosphorus Strait. The main aspect of these hot spots that stands out to an American girl (or, at least, this one) is the rich history attached to each site. They are subtle encouragements to hit the books to brush up on some history, or study it afresh in order to piece together things learned about the Ottoman Empire, Sultans, and the Crusades.

Ephesus was great, but intense. The weather was excellent while we were there, and we put a few miles on our shoes walking around, viewing 2000 year old carvings and checking out the amphitheater where the apostle Paul preached. Overall view and philosophical thoughts about the place: very cool.

Some of our time in Turkey was spent hanging out with my friend Jessica Williams, and checking out a few activities that she is involved with on a weekly basis. One of the highlights of this was attending an annual cooking class party with her, where we ate some killer Turkish dishes, and afterwards the meal transitioned into a dance party with mostly Muslim women. It was interesting, fun and a little out of my comfort zone.  

Turkish coffee is strong, typically handed to you in small cups almost like espresso. Usually there remains a strata layer of grounds in the dregs of your cup, and you smiley more conscientiously afterwards because the thick coffee likes to cling to the enamel of your teeth. It also appears to be a very manly drink, and I felt endangered of possibly growing a mustache after it was consumed.

My time in Ireland was quite a bit different than Turkey (as might be expected). In a way, Ireland was like putting on a sweater I like to wear, some of it remains homelike to me, and some of the time was spent traveling to favorite haunts like Glendalough, meeting friends from Dublin, and heading up North to where I used to go to school, then on up to the Antrim Coast, which is famous for sites like the Giant’s Causeway. While in Ireland I ate quality chocolate, drank properly made cups of tea, saw friends I had not seen for 2 ½ years, breathed in salt air from the ocean, took pictures in 500 year old cemetary, listened to sweet Irish trad music, and ate lamb shank at Johnnie Fox’s Pub. My time there met prior expectations, and rekindled friendships with people I love and respect. Overall, it was... "great."

What is Best

I was watching an episode of “Chopped” the other day, and was intrigued. The main idea behind the cooking show is to see which chef (out of 4) can create the most savory, magical dish using several ingredients pulled from a picnic basket. While the show was highlighting the oddity of having a rare vegetable in the mix, a man named Madison shrugged it off, explaining that there was a time when he was homeless, and learned by scraping through the contents of dumpsters how to work with what he found. During Madison’s interviews he continually expressed that everything in his life, including past transgressions, helped shape him into the man he is today. Madison went on to win the competition against the other chefs, and ultimately won the most coveted award among chefs who appear on “Chopped”: 50 Grand, and an illustrious title of Top Chef among Top Chefs! I find it interesting that a man with Madison’s background whipped chefs who worked for years with famous men in high class metropolitan restaurants. I am sure that Madison put his time and training in with the best of them, but this definitely says something positive about the School of Hard Knocks.


I think you would agree it is a valuable thing to recognize life experience as a mode of transformation. I have been memorizing some verses on 3x5 index cards. One of my verses tells me that God teaches me what is best (Isa. 48:17) and the next verse tells me that God is not a liar (Num. 23:19). As I’ve been memorizing these, I have been trying to ask myself hard questions that I usually indulge in avoiding, such as “Do I truly believe that God teaches me what is best?” It is a hard pill to swallow. If this is true (and we know that God does not lie), then every hardship, every turn in my path, every scraped knee, queasy stomach and heartfelt pang of disappointment were for my best- to teach me what is best. It takes a good teacher to be able to pull this off.

Sometimes I am absolutely flummoxed as a music teacher knowing how to teach what is best. There is a pivotal point in lessons where the student has finished playing their first excerpt, and the teacher needs to say something. Sometimes I have a choice between 3 to 4 things, and if we really made an encompassing list there would be all sorts of things I could say, but they hardly matter. The most weighty decision is what the BEST thing is to say- the very thing that will not discourage the young budding artist, the thing that will sharpen their musical skills and make them a more dedicated violinist in the end. Sometimes that thing is not “You need to play your C sharp higher.” or “change the angle of your bow.” Sometimes it’s just “Why did you not practice this piece?” It is a tricky, delicate matter, and I don’t totally have it figured out, but I am impressed by a teacher who does- a teacher who knows His students, and has a bigger picture in mind for them. If God can mold a master chef out of a man scavenging the bottoms of trashcans, then that should reinforce my resolve to entrust my education to Him.

Sleeping with Spiders

I believe a brown recluse might have taken a bite out of me while I was having a nap. The bite has spread across my upper rib cage; presenting itself as a blazing scarlet letter, but not any letter I recognize from the English alphabet. It goes much deeper than the skin too. It seems to have bruised down throughout my ribs, and vacillates between being painful and ridiculously itchy. It has affected my heart somehow too. At night, as I’m lying in bed, my heart seems to want to burst out of the confines of my ribcage. The stabs of pain around the bite have taken my body’s attention away from sleep. Really, who knew that such an itsy bitsy spider could affect an adult’s body in such a dramatic way? Apparently, it could be much worse. I’ve been looking at spider bites on the internet, and some of those pictures are very deeply seated in the human flesh, raw, and not to be looked at while dining (or carrying out). As I was brushing my hair today, I was taken aback by the fact that I looked so normal on the outside. I have a bite that affects me in all the ways previously mentioned, but the problem can be swiftly covered up by my black DW T-shirt.


Last week I finished rereading The Hobbit. It seems now like poetic justice that Bilbo Baggins killed so many spiders with Sting (his sword), and taunted them with names like Attercop and Tomnoddy. I’m not really sure what those names mean, but apparently it is highly offensive to spiders, and it made many of them very angry. My heart also goes out to the twelve dwarves who were stung by the creepy crawlies, and strung up in the trees incased in spider cocoons. If a little spider can do all the damage mentioned in the first paragraph, beware of getting attacked and eaten by giant ones!!!!

All this to say, good night, sweet dreams, and check under your covers before you hop in bed tonight.

Naomi, you can't get rid of me!

     I wonder if Ruth ever cast a tentative glance back toward the land of Moab. Did she ever question her decision to “goest where thou goest”? As resolute as her decision was to leave everything behind to go with her mother-in-law, it seems like there would be times afterward where she might have re-evaluated her choice of making this “bitter” woman her new best friend. Maybe Ruth didn’t agonize over these things too much, and maybe that is why she was worth 7 boys to Naomi. Maybe she only allowed herself to shed so many tears for her mom and pop back home, and looked straight ahead and attended to the task at hand (survival!). But even though we know her decision had the seal of God’s approval, it could not have been a stress-free environment for this tenderhearted Moabitess.

     Choices are fickled things. Are they not? When I try to draw some conclusions about them, part of me says I would like to see the result of my choices right away, as when the curtain is raised up on those glitzy game shows, and instantly the contestant knows if they are a proud owner of a new ca-arrr, or if they just got themselves a functional toaster oven. The other part of me says that it is okay that choices slowly play out. We know that in the throes of military action the results of choices are often quickly brought to light. You took a wrong turn, and now the comrade at your side has a bullet through his chest. Bad choice; now you know; the price is dear.

     Sometimes our choices demand more of us than we bargained for, and the weight lays heavily on our shoulders, such as the caretaker of a sick person on a “bad” day, or a mother who has just answered the same question for the umpteenth time, or the chain smoker next door, who, in his own ashen faced way is trying to shovel the snow out of his driveway. In all these situations, an individual might be tempted to examine the original point that brought them to that land of toil, and lament that they turned right at the fork-in-the-road instead of left.

     I am no Ruth, but I want to take a page out of her book; I want to learn from her example. I am sure the folks back in the land of Moab thought she was mad for the decision she made- thought that she was throwing away her chance to have a legacy, to have kids and a family. But what did they know? She grasped hold of the true God in that strange land that she found herself in, and thrived. We know how this story played out. How she became the ladylove of Boaz, how she became interconnected with the human chain that produced the likes of King David, and later heralded in the promised messiah. We know the decision she made to accompany Naomi was not stupid! It was not rash! It was a good, solid decision that brought blessing and transformed the lives of those closely associated with her. Naomi did not die calling herself Mara. That is something. Isn’t it? And I say, since we have such a cloud of witnesses that have gone before us, like this gal Ruth, let us run! run! run! the race marked out for us, and trust that our God brought us to Himself and this land for a reason.