Returning

By now, I’ve set a precedent for lengthy accounts of my trans-Atlantic travel. There is just so much time to think and write while sitting in airports, on trains, in in-between-flight guesthouses! And because I’m so often traveling alone, I have to imagine I’m talking to someone and sharing my observations, making random side comments in my head – which now get their outlet on the blog. Lucky you.

First of all, I reiterate my earlier statement that Gatwick Airport is a hole. A blight. Whoever designed it should be severely tortured… or at least made to transit through it at peak hours. Arriving Sunday afternoon on my Lithuanian Airlines flight, I decided to time how long it took to get from my gate to the baggage claim. Now, I was walking at a swift clip, faster than most everyone, and it still took almost 20 minutes of power walking to get from the gate to baggage – counting moving walkways. At one point the hallway turns right (follow the signs), then left (more signs), then left again (signs), basically forcing you to walk in a U rather than straight ahead. I have more sympathy for mice every day.

Once I finally got my bags (monsters, which by all rights I should have had to pay extra for, had I not played the “this flight originated before the weight limit change” card, ha ha!), I had the good fortune to get a broken luggage cart that seemed determined to list starboard no matter how straight I wanted it to go. This is with an estimated 53 kilos (120 lbs!) of book-laden luggage on board.

Monday, transiting back through, I gained new distain for the place – maddeningly crowded check-in areas, with no seating ANYWHERE to redistribute luggage, security guards who guarantee there are shorter security lines upstairs, which turn out to be four sluggish attendants running ONE conveyer (this is on a Monday holiday in one of the busiest airports in the world), toilets that don’t flush, and which are tucked off in far-away corners that require more maze-like navigation to find, seating areas that clog traffic flow, no electrical outlets situated near a table or chair, but rather on support poles that would require one to trip half of Britain if wanting to use the outlet, and so on and so on…

Oh how I now revere DIA, its wide aisles, its logical layout, its simple linear design. Its perfect Zen state of polished marble and chrome and open space. Ahh…

But not all my travels were frustrating, really. I got the unexpected pleasure of an overnight in London at a, dare I say it, quaint guesthouse in Horley. England is green, lush, blooming, dewy and warm, and so I spent Sunday night wandering the neighborhood near my B&B, smelling the flowers, until I unintentionally stumbled across the local train station. Who can resist the chance for an evening wandering around London? I hopped on the 5:30 train (words cannot express my love of those moments on the train, watching England pass smoothly past my eyes) and spent the evening on a whirlwind tour of the city, looking in vain for an Evensong service. Using the remaining mental map from my semester study abroad in the UK, I took the Tube from Victoria station to St. Paul’s Cathedral, and arrived an hour after a service/lecture on Gerard Manly Hopkins (my favorite poet), aagh! From there I walked to Trafalgar, hoping St. Martin’s would have a later service, but apparently the English like their church before 7 p.m. on Sundays! Instead I worshiped at the sacred altar of American cuisine and enjoyed a Diet Coke, a pile of fries and cheeseburger. Beautiful.

One thing I’m learning I need to be careful of when traveling is tuning out people around me instead of listening to ways the Holy Spirit might be prompting me to interact with people. It’s hard for me because I’m not a naturally social person with those I don’t know. But, at a friend’s urging, “don’t be afraid to get into conversations,” I decided not to hook into my beloved I-pod on my 8 hour flight from London to the Twin Cities. Instead, I spent almost the entire time talking with my seatmate, Charlotte Luter of Surrey, England. She’s a girl about my age with beautiful natural red hair, who was traveling with her parents to visit her older brother in Las Vegas. She lives in a small town south west of London and for the last nine years has lived at home and works in a pet shop. I’m sure it’s just normal life to her, but to me it sounds like an upcoming film starring Kiera Knightly and Hugh Grant! Throughout the flight, I kept looking for ways to turn the conversation to spiritual matters, or at least to look for ways to be an encouragement to her. I am not good at this – I am learning how to listen to the Spirit. I need to be so much more sensitive to promptings! But it was lovely to get to know someone even just a little bit, and when we landed in MSP, I met up with her and her family after customs and walked with them to their gate.

Rechecking luggage after customs in Minneapolis, I noticed a blond girl with a Lithuanian flag pasted on the side of her suitcase. I hung back from the security lines a bit so I would end up next to her, and could ask her, “Is Lietuvos?” (From Lithuania?). “Taip,” she replied, “ir tau?” (Yes, and are you?). “Taip, as irgi” (yes, me too), was my answer, “as gyvenu Klaipedoje,” (I live in Klaipeda). “But you have an American passport,” was her next comment (in a Lithuanian sentence I won’t attempt to spell!). At that point we switched into a mixture of my hesitant Lithuanian and her excellent English. I cannot explain the excitement I felt at having a Lithuanian conversation in the middle of the Minneapolis airport – the airport I’ve probably traveled through more than any other! We chatted our way through the security line, and then I gave her a card with my Klaipeda phone number on it and an invitation to contact me the next time she and her American husband (they live part time in Duluth) want to go to the beach in Lithuania! It’s a very American thing to be so friendly and open, but I didn’t care at that moment, sensing that just maybe it isn’t an accident that I would bump into a Lithuanian in Minnesota, and that God is always working in mysterious ways!

Throughout my travels, I am learning to sense one profound truth. God is with me, He is in the seat next to me on the train, squished onto airplanes, lying beside me in my hotel rooms, holding my hand on the buses and metros that carry me all these ridiculous places across the planet. I am feeling and knowing in my gut that He is Immanuel – my lover and my friend and my Father. “I walk with grace my feet, and faith my eyes,” and for days now I’m singing in my head:

”Sventa Viespats Jis Visagalis
(hmm, hmm, hmm hmmm) visa zeme”
“Holy is the Lord God Almighty
The whole earth is filled with His glory”

(I wish I could remember the first words of the second line in Lithuanian! Jus Lietuvoje, Padek!)