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.



New Year's Res

I thought I would slip this in before the Christmas season was entirely over, and I also thought this quotation echoed the heart of someone who knew how to make proper resolutions. Here are the words of Nate Saint:

"As we have a high old time this Christmas, may we who know Christ hear the cry of the damned as they hurtle headlong into the Christless night without ever a chance. May we be moved with compassion as our Lord was. May we shed tears of repentance for these we have failed to bring out of darkness. Beyond the smiling scenes of Bethlehem may we see the crushing agony of Golgotha. May God give us a new vision of His will concerning the lost and our responsibility."  

Surprising Joy

I have been listening to kids’ books in my car. It makes driving around town oh so much more daring-suspenseful-surprising-intriguing! I’m questioning the grammatical stability of that last sentence, but I’ve recently heard others like it, so it must be okay.


Two of the freshly listened to audio books have been from The Series of Unfortunate Events (bks 9 & 10) by Lemony Snicket. These books are witty and cleverly written, but the whole premise behind them is that nothing ever goes right (or ends right) in the books. The three orphans, who are the main characters in the series, continually escape the evil Count Olaf by using their inventive skills, book knowledge and sharp teeth. Nevertheless, I believe I will take a sabbatical from the books- I’m just a little put off with the fact that one the orphans had her sweetheart swept away by a flooded stream… that just seems so depressing. Depressing, but I should have guessed; nothing ever goes right for those orphans.

I think Lemony Snicket’s books get something right, though. It is an underlying principle in the book series that ingenuity comes out of cataclysmic situations, and I think that’s not skewing things too much. It IS probably during the most difficult seasons in our lives that good things are produced, and perhaps even marvelous things, such as prolific literature, invention, art, and sometimes… sometimes even joy. I can think of quite a few occasions where things seemed pretty dismal in my life, but where I also experienced joy at the same time. Weird. Paradoxical isn’t it? Here are the top three personal examples that come to mind as I type this paragraph.

Story #1: When I was in Bogota, Colombia I sunburned so badly that I looked like a lobster. The package deal with this sunburn included heat stroke and a blistered scalp. When things started to heal a day or two later, my skin started peeling like mad. I was a little embarrassed about this, considering that I was in a country where a person’s presentation and appearance heavily mattered, but the job of combing all the dead skin from my hair seemed gargantuan. My friend Jess pulled me aside and painstakingly combed through my hair getting rid of the disgusting dead skin. I’m sure it wasn’t pleasant for her, probably right up there with looking through hair for lice, but she took the time to do it, and even lightened the situation by cracking jokes and making me laugh. It made me happy that I had a friend like her.

Story #2: When I had my wisdom teeth pulled out, I remember sitting on the couch, watching the movie Hot Fuzz and eating a strawberry blizzard, both kindly supplied to me by my parents. Despite looking like a chipmunk and feeling like I had just come out on the unlucky end of a bar fight, I felt very loved and taken care of.

Story #3 A week after I had knee surgery, I fell on a freshly mopped floor at a Forensics and Debate national tournament. I was sick to my stomach- having felt something rip during the fall I was pretty sure I had undone everything the doctors had meticulously accomplished with the surgery. In the ER, while awaiting an X-Ray, I remember giggling with my debate coach, Marla, as the guy in the compartment next door related to a friend how he accidently chopped off part of his finger with a lawnmower. It doesn’t sound very funny right now, but maybe you had to have been there. We also took turns drawing pictures and commenting on the wall charts while we waited. It was a physically painful time, but probably one of the best bonding times I had with that coach.

How about you? What’s your story?

Racing Toward Hope

I am not sure I would recommend the movie Apocalypto to you; even though I definitely consider it a worthwhile flick. Just to put it out there, it’s not for those easily offended by South American Birthday Suits. But if you can take that with a grain of salt, you will find an epic story of a man battling ridiculous odds to stay alive, and to keep his family members alive as well. The gauntlet the hero endures is jaw dropping- spear wounds, arrows through the chest, encounters with a mama jaguar, being stretched out on a chopping block as unfriendly Mayans anticipate non-surgically removing his heart- this all keeps the storyline moving. It seems like at every turn Jaguar Paw, the hero, should be a dead man, but right as you think all is lost, there is a twist in events, or the man himself finds some kind of hidden strength- unnatural endurance to spur him on- keeping him from giving into fear. There was too much on the line for him to give up hope. He craved and clung to it with all his might… and then some.


This thread of an idea, pushing beyond natural human limits for the sake of hope, seems to be a reoccurring theme in my thought life recently. It is everywhere. I see elements of it in the Christmas story, lingering around that One in the manger, with the delicious soft infant skin and the cry of a newborn. Strong traces of it are found throughout Christ’s ministry, culminating to a fever pitch at gethsemane, the cross, and with manic victory at the empty tomb. The crushing weight of Christ’s battles, evidenced in drops of blood on his brow, through an enemy who would not leave him alone during his darkest hours, and through the water and blood that poured out from a broken heart. Death did not just threaten to take him, but actually swept him into that dark stream. Comparing this story to the movie mentioned earlier, I suppose one of the main differences between Christ and Jaguar Paw was that Christ did not just passionately cling to hope. He was, and is hope.

Through the influence of my brother and sister-in-law I have started to listen to a group called Mumford & Sons. There is song written by M & S called The Cave. I have had my computer repeatedly play this tune to me over the last week and a half. Here are a few lines from the chorus that have stuck in my head:

But I will hold on hope
And I won't let you choke
On the noose around your neck

And I'll find strength in pain
And I will change my ways
I'll know my name as it's called again

I don’t know about you, but there is a lot in life that seems to be bent on sucking my hope dry. But even with the crushing weight of circumstance, and the internal battles that wage war and leave us sputtering for breath, it is vital that we hold onto hope with all that we got. All that we got… plus some.