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.