Global economics has never felt so relevant!

Published

One of the definite perks of traveling back and forth between the States and Lithuania so much is the fact that I sometimes get to have layovers in beautiful places. I've got an overnight in London coming up next week on my way home, and last November I got a morning in Copenhagen. I managed to take some pictures there, which I posted publicly on Flickr.

I recently got an email telling me that my photo of Christiansborg square had been selected for inclusion in a new, online guidebook called Schmap. These are cool, free downloadable city guides for various major tourist destinations. Check it out! Best of all is that (unlike LCC's promotional department which has kyped pictures of mine off Flickr and included them in official materials without giving credit. Ahem), they contacted me and asked for permissions and had me sign an official copyright release to the images. Way to be ethical, Schmap-people. Incidentally, I don't even think it's that interesting of a picture! But it's fun to be included.

Tidbits

1. First, brilliant stuff (that I, of course really happen to agree with!) from Annie. (This one from a few weeks ago was good too).

2. Anyone hankering for some good winter fun in Lietuva? SAS published its winter specials

3. I can't remember what I was going to put here. It was interesting though, I promise. I'll add when I remember... ah yes, here it is:

"In 1900, The British Medical Journal reported that peasants of the Pskov region in northwestern Russia “adopt the economical expedient” of spending one-half of the year in sleep: “At the first fall of snow the whole family gathers round the stove, lies down, ceases to wrestle with the problems of human existence, and quietly goes to sleep. Once a day every one wakes up to eat a piece of hard bread. ... The members of the family take it in turn to watch and keep the fire alight. After six months of this reposeful existence the family wakes up, shakes itself” and “goes out to see if the grass is growing.” (from NYT).

So there, I'm not weird for feeling like death or sleep are the only logical approaches to this much darkness!

"people living in the land of the shadow..."

There is a weight to grayness in Klaipeda, in November, that is smothering. Add to the greyness the fact that the day begins around 9 and starts to dim again at 4. It hardly matters, though, because the only difference between night and day is that instead of dark gray, things are pale gray. We still have 3 weeks to go before solstice, when the loss of daylight will stop, but with losing 4 minutes a day, that's over an hour of light still to be lost. Someone once told me about a glowing orb in the sky which makes things bright. I forget what it's called. Remind me?

In addition to feeling smothered by weather (or more accurately, like the cloud cover is sitting on my chest, making it impossible to breath, then stuffing my head with cotton and immobilizing my limbs), I'm also buried underneath 120 Academic Writing projects that need to be handed back by Wednesday, so that I'm able to intake 60 more next weekend, and the week after that. This explains both why I haven't blogged in awhile, and why I'm procrastinatorily posting now! I think the dread of beginning to mark such a stack always outweighs the actual process.

My consolation is that soon, soon, soon I will be back in the land of sunshine and mountains. Reading back over those paragraphs I see I'm a typical candidate for seasonal affective disorder, and that I'm more than typically affected by landscape and weather. If you live in a place where you have seen sunshine this week (or even last), get down on your knees and thank God for it.

Another consolation to this darkness is that I feel it must put me in an Advent frame of mind more thoroughly than if I were living somewhere bright. This time in the church calendar is all about waiting, enduring the darkness of God's absence in those moments before He made good on all those promises to ancient Israel. This is the time of the remnant of Israel keeping watch in the centuries of darkness that preceded The Light of the World's arrival in human form. Imagine holding onto the hope that God would again shine His face on His people, even hundreds of years after they had been lost into exile.

And then... finally....

One favorite piece of music this time of year is the German poem, "Break Forth O Beauteous Heavenly Light," which Bach wrote music for in 1734:

Break forth, O beauteous heavenly light,
And usher in the morning;
O shepherds, shrink not with fright,
But hear the angel’s warning.
This Child, now weak in infancy,
Our confidence and joy shall be,
The power of Satan breaking,
Our peace eternal making.

The words and the music together, the promise in them, and the soaring melody, constantly heal me. This is the gospel - not fear, but light breaking through darkness, our JOY and CONFIDENCE that Christ has broken Satan's power and made way for peace. Eight lines, a few measures, but this is everything.

Recommendations

My friend Annie has done a great job lately on filling us in on her reading and film viewing habits. I've recently been kept company by a few works that I thought I should share:

You know how some music makes you feel like you're driving in a car with the windows open, through the mountains, as the sun is going down, and you're caked with dirt, sweat and bug bites from camping, and the car is full of your friends, and you're really, really happy, convinced that, no matter what happens in your life, things are going to turn out alright? (Or is that just me?)

I heard Josh Ritter's song "Good Man" played over the end of the finale of "House M.D.," season three. It conveyed the kind of lightness and wholeness that sent me running to my computer to figure out what song it was, and the inevitable subsequent iTunes purchase. Worth every penny - especially the song "Snow is Gone," from his album Hello Starling, with the memorable line: "I'd rather be the one who loves/ than to be loved and never even know." How've I gone this long without hearing this guy?! He's a Westerner (from Idaho) and his songs are full of wildlife and landscapes and all the stuff that makes me achingly homesick for summer and roads that I know.


There's a term for people who are highly knowledgeable in many areas - they're called polymaths. I make no pretensions to being one; I do, however, find myself endlessly fascinated by a new podcast, In Our Time with Melvyn Bragg, that I signed up for a couple months ago. One week, it's the history of The Arabian Nights and its acceptance into European literary circles, the next week,"The Discovery of Oxygen," then insights on the Fibonacci sequence, followed by explication of Wordsworth's autobiographical poem, "The Prelude". Not to mention investigations into the notion of guilt, what constitutes taste, Arab medieval philosophy.... It is a yummy program. The host interviews professors who are experts on the various topics and it's phenomenally engaging, even if you never thought "the discovery of oxygen" could make for a good 45 minute interview. I find myself wishing more of my university classes had been like these.


Ever since the days of reading Little House on the Prairie under my covers as a 7 year old (thus ruining my eyesight forever), I have been a notorious sucker for stories of pioneer wives. A friend sent me a DVD of an independent film, Sweet Land, that was released to a handful of theaters last year. I confess that before watching it I was skeptical of it being of the Janette Oke, western-wife-finds-God- and-love-on-the-prairie sort, full of heavy-handed Hallmark Hall of Fame greeting card sentimentality. I was very sweetly pleased to find otherwise (that is, after I got through wiping up the puddles of tears I cried seeing the big family scene at the film's opening. Yikes, I'm homesick! Don't worry, the film's only a tear-jerker for the currently exiled expats to whom America looms mythically large and beautiful from a distance).

Without giving away the (simple) plot too much, it's basically about a mail-order bride who comes to Minnesota from Norway in 1920. There are the expected challenges and prejudices, but what makes the movie surprising is the subtleness, silence and open spaces in the film. I LOVED the fact that there are large portions of Norwegian and German dialog left completely untranslated by subtitles - from two Norwegian young women chatting together at the train station, to the outbursts the frustrated young women shouts at her groom-to-be. They communicate with each other in smatterings of broken English, Norwegian, and German cognates, but other than that, there is a lot of silence, confusion and muddling through. I like this linguistic element for two reasons, 1. it reminds me that America has had, and always will have, the kind of linguistic diversity that I live with every day in Lithuania (even if no longer in the places I happen to live in the States), and 2. I can SO relate to the young woman's disorientation as so much of what goes on around her is unintelligible, even as she tries to figure out where she fits in this society.

Finally, it made me think about the lovely young women who I've met over the years at LCC, Ana from Albania, Agata from Lativa, and my friend Oksana a Russian-Lithuanian (among others) who have married American men, and whose own national stories are now going to be knit into those of my home country, just as mine has (just a little bit) been knit into this one. I love how strong these women are, to do the hard task of making homes in the world, to leave everything known behind and plant your feet firmly where you've arrived. The immigration debates going on in the States today are not new ones, but this film and my friends who're currently living out this story remind me of the rich history of America, and how its story is, fundamentally, the collective story of millions of individuals who have lived out this one.

Footprints

Some of you know my general distaste for cheesy Christian cliches and overwrought spiritual metaphors. If I were really out of my comfort zone and on fire for Jesus, keeping God at the top of my priority list, I probably wouldn't find this comic so funny. But I do.

(from marriedtothesea.com)

Advent

Christmas is 40 days away - can you believe it? We've gotten a dumping of snow, I'm already squirrling away presents to take home, and this hilarious post (play the song) has put me in the mood to play Christmas music.

(Apologies to all Americans, i.e. my family members, who believe Christmas music must be solemnly reserved for the period after Thanksgiving. Lucky for me, we don't have Thanksgiving here, so I can rush headlong into the season with no starting mark. HA!)

For a little more insight into the political situation around the Baltics, check out this New York Times article from the weekend.

Variation on a Theme by Rilke: Denise Levertov

A certain day became a presence to me;
there it was, confronting me--a sky, air, light:
a being. And before it started to descend
from the height of noon, it leaned over
and struck my shoulder as if with
the flat of a sword, granting me
honor and a task. The day's blow
rang out, metallic--or it was I, a bell awakened,
and what I heard was my whole self
saying and singing what it knew: I can.

Istanbul: Asia, Europe, the Golden Horn and the Islands

Baklava for Breakfast

The other day as I was sitting in a cafe in Istanbul, writing (which is basically my idea of vacation perfection), I realized that that city is impossible for me to text-ualize! It is a perpetual feast of sensation and contradiction and craziness. For a city that is thousands of years old, it's surprising that the strongest effect it has on me is to make me stop, smell and listen to the present moment. I wrote about this feeling of intoxication when I was there in the summer, and this past week was no different.

I think my friend Jerilyn, who I was visiting, thinks I'm a bit nuts for how much I enjoy the city - and certainly people who have lived and worked in Turkey for years have much more complex, shall we say, perception of the place than I can ever have gotten in my short 6 weeks there. This past week I was glad I got to see a different set of realities than I saw as a catered-to teacher this summer. This included coming home to a sewage-flooded bathroom in Jerilyn's basement flat on Sunday, witnessing the enthusiastic (if not somewhat frightening) nationalistic pride on Turkish Independence Day on Monday, being kissed on the cheek by an entrepreneurial rug seller at the Egyptian market on Tuesday, watching goats and chickens and salesmen parade up and down the streets of Tarlibashi outside Jerilyn's front windows nearly every waking moment of the day, and sharing the normal rhythms of academic life with a friend who was studying for a major exam. I had my own work to get done this week as well, so my "toursity" endeavors were limited to a little shopping and exploring the neighborhood up the Golden Horn and in Kadikoy on the Asian side, where I had not been in the summer.

In general, I feel so blessed to have had a similtaneously laid-back and eventful week off. Daily life in Istanbul is never dull (where crossing a street can require a strategic campaign), but I am back in Lithuania feeling rested, thankful for God's miracles, and ever-thankful for the ways that He allows lives to intersect and encourage one another in our sometimes-lonesome travels. Best of all, much of my week was spent writing, and working on needed school work. As usual I've posted pictures of our adventures on Flicker.

Laundry, Chickens

This is literally just around the corner from my friend Jerilyn's flat, in the Tarlibashi neighborhood of Istanbul. Strangely enough, it's also only a 5 minute walk from 3 uber-Western Starbucks joints on Istikklal Caddesi, one of the nicer shopping and pedestrian streets in all of Istanbul. I joked with Jerilyn upon crossing the street to her neighborhood (and passing the gun-wielding police next to the tank on the corner) that we should get our passports out. Crossing the street is like entering another country.

Eyup mosque at sunset, All Saints Day

Sweet Rocktober

All I have to say is, I am really glad that the Boston Red Sox managed to break their World Series curse in 2004.

That will allow me to feel no sense of guilt or loss when the Rockies beat them this year. Boy, I wish I were home.

Go Rockies!!

Eye of the storm

As you might guess from the length of time between my posts lately, my schedule this fall has been a little taxing. I seem to have insane weeks followed by empty ones - and neither extreme is quite what I like! This is an empty one. Next week will be insane, and then I'll be off for Fall Break when I'll go to visit a friend in Istanbul. And then, it'll be six quick weeks till Christmas. How the time gets away from me, I'll never know, but I do feel a bit bad that I haven't kept you readers and friends better updated! I put some pictures up on Flicker today, so that'll give you some glimpses of life at LCC, Year 3.

My focus and energy this year is directed in a different direction than in the past, which is not bad, but has given my life a different flavor. I am teaching more students (60 first- year writers, plus another 30 in my other classes) than ever before, with a heavier marking load. Moreover, my big task for this year has been to help develop a tutoring center, which we're calling the ARC, and training writing tutors. This has turned into a fairly big project with lots of little details to oversee. I am really glad to see some academic resources being developed on our more "community-life" oriented campus. I am hoping that when I go from LCC at the end of the year, there will be a good system in place to continue to promote student writing in the future.

Additionally, my roommate has left this year, 2 of my close friends in the English department have gone on to new positions, and my good friends, the Hoelterhoffs have moved to Northern England. This has meant some redrawing of friendship boundaries and a move to a one-bedroom apartment, as well as a much different rhythm to my days. I am happy to say that I get myself to the swimming pool 2 or 3 times a week for lap-swims (and eyefulls of old ladies, as referenced below!), plus I've been taking more time to write, and the outcome has been that I have a poem forthcoming in the January 2008 issue of The Priscilla Papers (this is Christians for Biblical Equality's exegetical journal). Yay!

I find myself missing home and, - sigh, as usual - my mountains, and I'm looking forward to 3 full weeks in Colorado at Christmas. Fortunately, today is a beautiful fall day, and the weather has turned to a beautiful, frosty October afternoon. I'm going for a walk with two friends after lunch and learning to enjoy the tempo of this new year.

Some Scenes from the Fall

New name and new dorm: LCC International University and Neumann Hall.

New students and old: Olga, Julia and Nadia, from Belarus.

First Year Seminar outing to the Dolphinarium: Natalija, Ira, Ohla, Aina and Katya.

Olena represents Ukraine and the International Festival.

Fatjon and Aina from Albania, at the International Festival.

Anyone who thinks that....

obesity is just an American problem or social phenomenon, has not recently been to the swimming pool or ladies locker room at the Klaipeda hotel. Wow.

The Tree of Language

I'm writing again.

We had poet visit LCC from the States last week. She very kindly did a reading and a poetry-writing workshop with our students. It was nice to have another person on campus to reinforce the value of the written word. I, however, was very struck by the fact that her writing was - in my opinion- nothing spectacular! (Don't underestimate the jealousy of writers).

What this meant, though, was that I decided I need to kick myself into gear and write more regularly. I'm aiming at a poem a day. Here's where I'll house them in all their minimally-edited, "spontaneous overflow" stage of being.

Emily

Because I've been teaching American Literature for about 5 years now, I find that my appreciation of the stories, the language, the freshness of what the authors were doing has been blunted a little bit. It makes me sad that I'm not getting to read Thoreau and Whitman for the first time, like my students are. I'm sad that Thoreau's great words about living deliberately and Whitman's obnoxious confidence don't reverberate the way they did when I first took them in. However, I do occasionally read slowly and carefully enough that I get back to a moment of pure excitement and appreciation.

Behold, the best poem ever. I don't think I'm exaggerating - this one here is, in my humble opinion, a genius-level use of musicality in language, compelling metaphor, concise imagery, an integration of meaning and form that I don't think could ever get tired of teasing out. And of course, it's Emily Dickinson. Who else could it be?

Tell all the Truth but tell it slant –

Success in Circuit lies

Too bright for our infirm Delight

The Truth’s superb surprise

As Lightning to the Children eased

With explanation kind

The Truth must dazzle gradually

Or every man be blind –

An observation

Laughter is really, really good. "The Office" has the highest laughing-so-hard-I-can't- catch-my-breath quotient of any show I've ever watched (though "Arrested Development" is a close second). Example from last night's premiere that was greatly enjoyed this evening by those of us on the other side of the world:

Angela: Is everything alright at home?
Dwight: Well, you left your T.V. on. And your cat's dead.

"The cure for everything is salt water: sweat, tears, or the sea." Isak Dinesen

I got home at 8 last night, at the end of a long, duty-filled week, worn out by the sense of how much of what I do feels like pushing a rock up a hill, or swimming against an inevitable tide of discouragement. And no one to talk to about it. I changed my Facebook status to "lonely," tried to read some Alice Munro, gave up and cried myself to sleep.

This morning I slept and slept and slept, crawled out of the covers around 11, made myself coffee and opened my computer to a few friendly messages waiting for me on Facebook. I ate my breakfast and clicked through my friend Andrea's blog, ran across her link to Donald Miller - an author I'was reading a lot of in the years before coming to Lithuania - which led me to The Burnside Writer's Collective, and their companion blog. Which led me to their links page which then led me to what quickly became my latest blog crush (shssh, don't tell him), which is why it is now almost 2 p.m. and I'm still in my bathrobe, the dishwater has gone cold in the sink, and I'm working on my third cup of coffee and wondering if those thoughts I was having last night - about getting myself out of this exhausting teaching profession and throwing my lot in with the starving writers of the world - may actually be worth paying attention to. Granted, while there is little money and no recognition in teaching, there is even less money and marginal recognition in writing, but I'd get to spend quite a bit more time in my pajamas!

Days of Awe

So I’ve had a few chastisements from friends and family for my long absence from the blog. And my friend Annie was right when, in our conversation via Skype yesterday, she noted that when I’m not writing on the blog it’s usually because I’m probably dealing with things I don’t necessarily want to air in public quite yet.

That’s not to say things are terrible or out-of-control, but it has been a month of many-traveled miles, lots of change, new schedules, new relationships, and stretched-out emotions. Today’s the 15^th of September, which means that in the past month, I‘ve finished work in Turkey, visited with friends for a week in England, flown back to Lithuania (via other friends in Riga, Latvia), moved out of one apartment and into another, endured countless beginning-of-the -school-year meetings, weekend work days, participated in expected community activities, wrestled for a week with the telecom company to get internet transferred from one apartment to another, adjusted to getting up at 6 a.m. to teach an 8:30 course, started swimming regularly, taken on 60 first-year writing students, and realized I now know the names of about 60-70 % of LCC’s students since I’ve now had 10 classes worth of first-years pass through my courses! Suffice it to say that I’m coming back to my senses a bit this weekend.

In the midst of this hectic time, I also am quite aware that I’ve been a bit of a spiritual prodigal lately. Various events and challenges of the past few months (and year, really) brought me to a place of just plain-out exhaustion with my relationship with God, with a little anger and disappointment mixed in. I’ve been pretty prayer-less and unsubmissive. It’s felt very much like an estranged family relationship, where both parties know that the child is going to crack sooner or later, but in the meantime, she just wants to have her heedless fun and numb herself to the concerns of the rest of the world.

Funnily enough, what brought this image so clearly to me yesterday was watching one of my “numbing” treatments, that being my vast collection of Gilmore Girls episodes on DVD. Rory and Lorelai Gilmore are pretty much my best friends at the moment, so I was spending my Saturday cleaning my (lovely new) apartment, washing dishes, baking and marathon-watching season 6 of the show. In the first 1/3 of the season, the main mother & daughter characters are not speaking to one another. Sparing the details, it’s enough to say that the daughter has the inevitable coming-to-her-senses and rushes home. Her mother runs out of the house to envelop her, and then pulls out a box of sticky notes containing all the thoughts, ideas and funny things that she had wanted to tell her daughter during the time they weren’t speaking. So they jump into making up for the time they’ve lost and spend the rest of the episode reading through the random notes, laughing.

God has a big box of sticky notes waiting for me, I know. Just because I haven’t wanted to listen, that doesn’t mean that He doesn’t have things He’s been wanting to tell me. I love the way He’s been trying to creep back into my heart.

For example, this Thursday, my friend Maja brought me some apples. Everyone’s trees are loaded with apples at the moment, so there’s always plenty around for baking in the fall. She also brought me a jar of honey, a small portion of a gift she’d received from some student’s parents, more than she could eat herself.

Putzing around my kitchen yesterday, I decided to see what I could cook with apples and honey. Running a search by ingredients, I found a recipe for apple-honey cake. It was on a webpage devoted to Jewish cooking. Coincidentally enough, apples and honey are traditionally eaten during the Jewish New Year, Rosh Hashanah. They are meant to symbolize the hope of sweetness in the coming year. Reading this, I remembered that the High Holy days of the Jewish calendar usually begin sometime in September, so I did some more searching. Rosh Hashanah was this past Wednesday and Thursday, and this weekend is the first Sabbath of the “Days of Awe” – the time of repentance between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur.

I made my apple-honey cake and read about the meaning of these holidays. This is the time when the people are meant to have a period of self-examination and repentance, after which they are judged by God for the coming year. Psalm 81 is a traditional Psalm of Rosh Hashanah – during which the shofar trumpets are blown and God reminds them:

“I am the LORD your God, who brought you up out of the land of Egypt.
Open your mouth wide, and I will fill it.”

Of all the things I expect from the coming year, I have to confess that I don’t really expect a year of sweetness. Hope’s run out a bit, and when God asks that I open wide my mouth so He may fill it, I suspect it to be filled with bland manna, not honey. But the verses that end the Psalm promise:

“He would feed you with the finest of wheat,
And with honey from the rock I would satisfy you.”

Where a Protestant might just see ingredients, a Jew sees promises. I baked my cake, invited friends over to share it last night, and try to believe that what lies ahead will be sweet. That a time of repentance leads to a year of dwelling in the presence of God.

At last I have proof...

As someone who recently endured 4 trans-Atlantic flights in 8 weeks, including 3 transfers through Heathrow, I was strangely gratified to hear this report:

"According to an experiment commissioned by Silverjet, which operates all-business class flights between London Luton and New York Newark, and conducted by the neuropsychologist David Lewis, the stress that passengers endure when traveling through Heathrow is higher than that of a Formula 1 driver during a race, a free-fall parachutist during a descent, or riot police confronting a stone-throwing mob.

"Heart rates and physiological stress levels of the travelers peaked at four times their normal resting levels during the trial," Lewis said.

So you may share my surprise to learn that Heathrow rates only third place, behind London Gatwick and Stansted in a league table of "British Airports of Shame".

Now you all know that I was not exaggerating!

A quick plug

There's an interesting series on CNN this week (too bad I don't have a TV!) called "God's Warriors." Each night of the week, Chrisitane Amanpour is interviewing people of different faiths (Jewish, Muslim, Christian) about the issues of faith and political action. The "Video diary" clip for the Christian evening is from her visit to Greg Boyd and Woodland Hills Church in Minneapolis - check it out. (Greg also talks about it on his blog).

Photo consolation

Yikes people, I have been busy! My work has come to a near-screeching halt this morning as I've finished marking and evaluating student papers. I'll try to take some time and write about the blur that has been the past two weeks soon. In the meantime, I've put up photos. Enjoy.

Halfway point

I'm just about exactly at the half-way point of my time in Istanbul. Part of me wishes that I were spending more time sharing stories and sights of my time here. Another part of me is just enjoying the chance to be, rather than to think so much. I don't know if it is the fact that its summer, or that this city is so vibrant, or that there are so many fun things to do, but I feel like I am in a comfortably busy rhythm - one which hasn't left room for reflection.

Of course, I do have the long Lithuanian winter for pondering, so for now, I am enjoying the watching the ripening of the moon over the waters of the Bosporous, wiping the drips of sweat from my forehead in the midday heat, eating fresh cherries and watermelons every day at lunch, smelling fish and cigar smoke and the roasting ears of corn for sale on the street corners. I am not usually one who enjoys squeezing myself into a dingy corner of a bar that's pulsing with people, or shouting across tables where music is too loud to admit conversation, but for some reason, I relish that now, being out on the streets filled with tables of people who're leaning in close to each other, sharing their tea and cigarettes.

I like the Wednesday nights when we've gone to hear the Gypsy music at the cafe up the hill, and the evenings of walking the pedestrian-choked Istikkal Cadessi street as everyone watches everyone else. It's a feeling of fullness and color and life taking place at an organic level, too deep for thinking, just sensation and sound.

Quick Update

It is late, and I've really been procrastinating, so I'm just going to give a quick list of this week's highlights, in no particular order:

* My friend Nicole, from Lithuania, visiting for 4 days!

* Using the gorgeous university swimming pool every day

* Taking a ferry trip up the Bosporous under moonlight

* Making Lithuanian saltibarscai (cold beet soup) for my co-workers for Sunday dinner

* Going with a friend to find Harry Potter 7 for sale at the English bookshop down the street

* Wandering into the Catholic church this morning to find it FULL of Africans, Phillipinos, whites and Turks, and lots of beautiful singing. I've never seen that before in Europe (a full church), and it brought tears to my eyes.

* Enjoying my second visit to the Union Church, as well as a lovely after-church lunch with great people and believers from all over the world

* Conversing with Lithuanians in the Aya Sofia mosque - in Lithuanian!

* Savoring a long dinner with Nicole, looking out on the city as the sun went down

* Baklava. Yum.

* Chatting with and teaching amazing students from the entire Central Asian region

* Laughing a lot with colleagues and friends. Working hard on lesson plans.

* Being present, here and now, to the gift of this time, this city, and the souls I'm here with.

Byzantium

Sorry for the slight delay in posting anything about my new adventures. The week has flown by in a flurry of lesson prep, meetings, Nescafe and jetlag. Suddenly, yesterday afternoon, I woke up and realized I was in Istanbul - walking over the Galata Bridge into Sultanhament (the old city) I had that moment I needed, when things clicked in and I felt the city get under my skin. It is beautiful, and there are people everywhere, and it is HOT and noisy, and smells invade every corner, and the flags of political parties whip and flutter over the walking streets. People seem to walk in a rhythm, and walking around this morning on Istikkal Caddesi, music buzzed out the doors of the music shops.

My colleagues and the other expats I have met are all an interesting, well-traveled bunch - the kind who can say, "oh yeah, when I was in Tblisi (or Dunshabe or Almaty)" without anyone batting an eye. Which, of course, makes for immediately riveting conversations of the kind that can only exist when a bunch of over-educated, displaced people get together. Really, really fun.

Before I ramble on too much, I will simply post a couple pictures. I still have a shocking amount of prepping to do, and there's a student welcome reception this evening yet to attend. Stay tuned ...

Sultanhamet looking over Galata Bridge, Beyoglu

Coming out of my apartment/hotel and walking down around a corner, this is the view to the Old City.

Rustem Pasha Mosque

It's very, very late, and it looks like a bomb has gone off in my room. I am in total denial about both the fact that 1). I have to pack and 2). I will be in Istanbul, Turkey tomorrow (well, Tuesday). Tonight is one of those Colorado nights full of crickets and stars, cool and soft. Several friends spent this last evening with me at my parent's place, and we watched the sun go down behind the mountains, laughed, and watched an owl fly to a perch on our neighbors roof.

I tried to think of a mythological symbolic meaning for seeing an owl - I've never seen one in real life (outside a zoo) before, and since this is a night before I leave, I felt like I could make it mean something. Maybe it means impending doom. Maybe it means I need to seek wisdom. Maybe it means I should follow the owl's path and I will be well... or some other such hokum. Instead, I think I should just take it for the beautiful little gift it was. A beautiful detail of a beautiful night, something to fill me up before I start another journey.

I don't feel ready. I feel more full of fear than I should. Instead of it getting easier to come and go and come and go, it's getting harder. My heart yearns more strongly for a home. But none of that changes the fact that Monday evening, I get on a plane and leave. I know that I can't conjure up the right state of mind or heart to be prepared for these next weeks. I am utterly dependent on the Lord to do the work in me and through me that I can't do for myself.

I ran across this great article today.

My infatuation with Lauren Winner continues! I devoured two of her books (having read another earlier) this summer. The most recent this week was her memoir, Girl Meets God. I continually had the sensation as I read it that she GETS it. That so many of her struggles and thoughts are familiar to me.

Faith, Hope…and, Love (or, a long overdue exercise in honesty)

Tonight there is heat lighting over the plains. The weather is changing – no stars are visible through the thick summer clouds. As I drove west this evening, it seemed like everything was vibrating with gold light. The wheat fields were white-washed with the sunset, and the sky felt big and round over the swaths of green corn and young wheat.

Now, I hope there will be rain.

I have wanted to write for so long now. I look back over the past couple months of the blog and realize I haven’t written much of consequence, nothing real to my situation, in a long time. I’d love to say that I’ve been doing a lot of personal writing instead, but that’s not true either.

It is hard to write when I’m numb. When I’m sort of pulled inside myself, holding on to whatever bit of security I can seem to find. And there hasn’t been much to cling to lately. And what God offers of Himself, I tell Him I don’t want.

I know from past experience that the most important thing to do when I am feeling bound up and stuck and depressed is to write, and write honestly, and write for myself first of all. It is synonymous with prayer. As Simone Weil says, “Tender perseverance is impossible when we live alienated from our heart.”

Where to begin? There are the surface hurts and the deeper fears, and the root of it all is a question of faith. But I’m getting ahead of myself.

The ‘M’ word

How can I put this without sounding like a pathetic single girl wrapped up in layers of self-pity and resentment? Since getting home to the States, I feel surrounded by the specter of the ‘M’ word. (Maybe this explains my interest in the articles posted below). I got off the plane in Minnesota, to spend a few days with my newly-married (six-years-younger-than-me) brother and his lovely wife, Liv. I got up in the mornings to find them snuggling on the living-room air mattress. Perfectly normal behavior, perfectly in-tune with their life stage. Perfectly weird - to a much-older sister who still sees her brother as a gawky 16-year-old, singing in barber shop quartets and hosting Warcraft gaming parties in his bedroom.

Then, coming to Denver, I spent a quick couple days visiting with two dear friends who I won’t have other chances to see. Both of them are away from Colorado this summer, spending their time with fiancés who live in other states, spending time at home planning weddings. I got my once-a-year cup of coffee date and an afternoon hike before they shipped out for the next few months.

Then there was the beautiful wedding of my best friend’s little sister, an afternoon wedding shower for my younger sister who’s getting married in July, some bridesmaid dress fittings, and then I set out for a four-day visit to a friend in Nebraska. This friend, too, has moved away for the summer to be near a boyfriend, convinced that this relationship is headed in a hopeful direction. There were four days of hearing her excitement and love for the person that God has brought her, how he is an answer to prayer.

And in the midst of this, too, my own dearest and oldest friend has started dating an amazing guy – one who seems unlikely to break her heart in the way others have recently. And she is happy.

Did I mention my 93-year-old grandfather? He wants to get married to the woman who is his companion & friend at the nursing home. The woman who has given him something to be happy about since my grandma died last October.

I really, really want to convey all this without self-pity. Elisabeth Elliot in her great book, Passion and Purity, says of self-pity, “refuse it absolutely. It has the power to destroy you.” But, despite all the blessings that surround me, I am swimming in feelings of loss, isolation, rootlessness and loneliness that are harder than ever to navigate.

I am still committed to being in Lithuania next year. I am still committed to using my education and training and passions in whatever way and in whatever place God asks of me. I am desperate to be obedient to God’s call for my life. But this summer, at this juncture of life, I have to confess that I am finding it hard to die to the self, to be the living sacrifice that I must be whenever my own desires raise their voices above God’s call. It is hard for me not to frame my choice and commitment to being in Lithuania as yet another year of hopelessness in regards to my very human desire to be a wife and mother someday. Choosing to be in Lithuania means choosing to die to these desires, again. And I am finding myself ever more resistant to dying in this way, resentful of others who seem to have the blessing of marriage granted to them so easily, angry that God seems to demand MORE from me than from anyone else I know.

Lies. Of course.

Elisabeth Elliot puts her finger on just this sensation when she writes about her lessons in dying to desire, saying:

“’When the will of God crosses the will of man,’ Addison Leitch said, ‘somebody has to die.’ Life requires countless ‘little deaths’ – occasions when we are given the chance to say no to self and yes to God… ‘little deaths’ have to be died just as great ones do. Every reminder that arouse[s] a longing ha[s] to be offered up.”

So I know that this effort to die to self, to be surrendered to Christ, is a continual battle for me. This heart-longing for companionship and “partnership in the gospel” is at the epicenter of Satan’s attacks on me, the place that he plants fears and lies and insecurities. And this is the place where, in the past few weeks at home, I have felt completely and totally helpless to lift up my head. I KNOW all the right answers – that God rewards those who obey Him, that He is faithful to meet all my needs in Christ Jesus, that I have already been blessed with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly realms.

But despite this, I cannot seem to raise up my head, to feel the excitement and hopeful joy that is the mark of a Spirit-indwelt disciple. I feel instead like I just have to keep trudging along, that this year will be an exercise in teeth-gritting obedience. And I am weary of waiting. As my friend Jerilyn and I have become fond of saying, “we don’t really want to be holy.”

In this state of being, I feel more keenly than ever that I am helpless to change my heart towards God. I am helpless to love Him, to accept love, to be good, to have right thoughts and actions. I am helpless in every way except that God reach down and pull me up. HE must reveal Himself and His faithfulness to me. I am Psalm 40, “I waited patiently for the Lord, HE inclined and heard my cry.” Although, I can’t say that my spirit is behaving all that patiently.

So this is not a post so much about Love, as about Faith. The issues raging in my heart are not as much about desiring what I do not have – in the form of marriage, home and hopes for a family – as they are about my faith in the Faithful One. My trust that He is working good in and from my life. Brennan Manning’s book Ruthless Trust says, “Unwavering trust is a rare and precious thing because it often demands a degree of courage that borders on the heroic.”

Going back to Lithuania is not necessarily heroic – in fact, I have grown incredibly tired of those well-meaning comments about how “adventurous” I am. It’s not an adventure anymore, it’s my life. But I do find the struggle to trust the Lord and to “hope only in Him” to be requiring some heroic efforts!

How do I have hope in general – hope in God’s revelation of His glory, hope in His redemption of suffering, hope in His making new of all creation – without having hope that specific desired events in my own life will come to pass? I am learning how and where to pin my hopes, so that my heart can be hopeful, can look forward to good things, but still remain entirely open about what those good things might be. What this hopefulness has begun to look like is an active choice to believe what God says about Himself and His love for me. It also requires me to actively choose my life, again. I can’t just go back to Lithuania, to Turkey for the summer, without intentionally, purposefully, and whole-heartedly choosing to accept God’s plans for me. I must actively choose to die to my hopes and desires.

Fortunately, I am reminded that: “There is a big however. It is this: We are not meant to die merely in order to be dead. God could not want that for the creatures to whom He has given the breath of life. We die in order to live…. A seed falls into the dark earth and dies. Out of its death comes multiplied life” (Elisabeth Elliot, Passion and Purity).

Or, as someone has said, “she who would be a light must endure burning.” I want to know what this multiplied life looks like. I want to know that there is life that will come out of whatever paltry sacrifice I might think I’m making this year or with my life.

“It takes faith to believe this, as it take faith for a farmer to plant a seed. It takes faith to live by it, faith to act on it, faith to keep looking at the joyful end of it all. A failure of faith here leads certainly to resentment and then to depression” (Elliot).

Faith means looking beyond what seems possible – and it, frankly, seems impossible at this late hour that I will ever meet someone I'd love enough to marry; impossible that I will find a way to continue in cross-cultural work without someone next to me as encouragement and support, whose vision and passion I am designed to support and encourage too.

Faith means, too, to keep walking in the dark, when I can’t feel the comfort of God or the joy that I desire to feel. For some reason, in this season of my life I keep hearing the urge to “keep walking” as a command similar to “grow up.” Keep walking forward, even if I don’t feel, see, sense or perceive God’s presence. We are to grow up in our faith, to learn how to walk in maturity, and this means walking in the dark, when there are no promises other than that God loves me, He has demonstrated His love in Christ, and that alone is real, regardless of all else.

This is very insightful. Thanks for the link, Marcie!

Sunday, 6/24, addendum: Wow, this is good too, if only because I have said some of these exact things in conversations with younger women in the past two weeks (from the other side of the gender fence, obviously).

Tuesday, 6/26, addendum 2: Also good.

A few brief updates

1. Please say a prayer for my dad who had to have urgent surgery for a detached retina this morning. The recovery will mean 2 weeks of lying face down with an eye patch. Ick.

2. If you're in Colorado, you're invited to an evening of stories and updates from Lithuania, next Wednesday evening, June 27th at 7 p.m. Address is 3120 Branding Iron Circle, Milliken. Contact me if you'd like directions.

3. I just discovered the really cool blog of my former pastor, Greg Boyd, who's attending a conference about contemporary science and theology in Boston this week and blogging his thoughts. Very meaty and interesting!

My last 2 weeks in photos, because I'm too lazy to write at the moment

Our Cabining weekend in Leadville, CO. This is the view from the cabin living room out to the Collegiate Peaks. Words are not enough!

Ahh, the Kayaking....

At Twin Lakes, near Mt. Elbert and the Collegiate Peaks wilderness. This is some HIGH elevation - 10,500 ust at the lakes. I was huffing just walking up the hill to our picnic table!

Marcie and I enjoy the sunshine!

On my arrival in Minnesota for 4 days, my sister-in-law, Liv, and I sat around a lot, read books, and I drank American coffee from this really cool mug depicting 3 of my favorite things, maps, languages and coffee!

My brother greets me with the ever-coveted Cap'n Crunch cereal. Ahhh, cereal...

Lilac Time

My apartment is filled with the smell of lilacs, which are peaking this week in Klaipeda, and with the smell of dirty clothes from traveling, sauna-ing and biking expeditions. My friend Dwilah arrived in Europe on May 8th, and my friend Nicole and I met her in Krakow, Poland for a week-long mountain/city vacation. It was fantastic and low-key. Pictures are up on Flckr, but the following two illustrate the lovely balance of the trip:

Exhibit A: Jen's natural habitat, part 1, Massolit Bookshop in Krakow




















Exhibit B: Jen's Natural Habitat, part 2, Morskie Oko, Tatra National Park




















Now that we're back in Klaipeda, I am dragging Dwilah along on all the Lithuanian activities that I myself have not had a chance to do yet, which have thus far included only my second visit to the beach sauna (100 degrees Celcius! Labai Karstas!), tomorrow's adventure to the Hill of Crosses (a major Lithuanian site I have yet to pilgrimage to), to the top of the tall church in Riga on this coming Thursday (I SWEAR I will get to the top of that thing yet, it's always closed when I'm there!), and this past Saturday, we bicycled from Klaipeda to Nida, an 82-kilometer trip! I have been wanting to ride the whole trail system on the Spit (nearby strip of land off the coast of Lithuania) since reading about it last year. We started calling the trip the 1st Triathalon of the "Lithuanian Chapter of the International Contingent of the North American Rocky Mountain Women's Outdoor Adventure Association" (aka, the LCICNARMWOAA, made up of myself, Dwilah and Jerilyn). We had a FABULOUS time, setting off at 9 am and returning at 10:30 p.m. We stopped and climbed dunes, saw my favorite spot in Juodkrante (the Witches Hill), ate Lithuanian cold beet soup in Nida, looked at amber, long-jumped in the sand, saw a vast variety of Lithuanian mullets, swam in the Baltic, ate chocolate cake at the Villa Flora hotel (also a favorite), watched the sun go down and the stars come out over the Baltic, smelled the pines, and WORE ourselves OUT. It was lovely.

Jen's Weekend

This is just to give you a picture of what my last 3 days have been like. Since the finals I gave were scheduled on Thursday night and Friday afternoon, I have had aproximately 2.5 days in which to mark all the above papers, exams and portfolios before grades are due Monday at noon. I am almost, almost done, so enough of the pity train. But seriously, can you believe the size of that pile!

Graduation Day 2007 at LCC

LCC students on Graduation Day, Saturday, April 28th.
More pictures on Flckr!

Not my own

Well, since I’m sitting at this computer wasting time by reading every blog I ever read, checking if there is anything new on the magazines I read, calculating and recalculating the cost of plane tickets for the summer, I guess I might as well get around to updating this.

[Insert typical “it’s the end of the school year!” madness excuse for not blogging here.]

Okay, that felt good.

It has been a few weeks of feeling tossed up in the air, and I’m beginning to feel that slightly discomforting, melancholic feeling that accompanies the end of a school year. I don’t know why it is, but at the end of a semester, I always feel just a little bit insecure. Like, we suddenly stop our routines and forward motion and realize that this academic cycle is just a game we’re all agreeing to play. And when you strip away the piles of papers that I’m perpetually marking, there’s an insecure little person underneath. And she doesn’t always know how to evaluate the usefulness of her own life and ministry once you take her to-do list away.

This kind of disorientation is not a bad thing, but it can be unsettling. Which probably explains why last week I got hit with the biggest wave of homesickness that I have yet battled since getting here. Unfortunately, it was also accompanied by an equally large wave of self-pity, which left me too proud to pick up the phone and actually call many people. Oh no, I want to be pursued by my so-called friends. It is not always MY job to initiate, right?

This is crazy talk, I know. But I have never claimed to be emotionally stable, have I? Sigh. In the midst of this end-of-year tumultuousness there have been discouragements – work stress, plans for the baptism of two students that fell through, racial attacks against students of mine – and I have found myself wishing that there were close friends around to cushion the blows of discouragement when they come.

I guess this is where the homesickness comes from. There is a preciousness to being with people who love you. Who you can openly cry with. Who will let you vent and rant and be frustrated, and then give you some needed perspective. I have needed perspective.

It is a sign of how worn out I am that I almost turned down a job I was offered last week. It is a job teaching academic writing with a summer program in Istanbul, Turkey. In short, it is an amazing opportunity, working with great people, in a city I would love to get to know. However, I had to really step back and pray and ponder whether I am emotionally able to step out in another adventure this summer, or if I should rather just soak in the love and blessing of being with people who love me. Of being home.

It was not an easy decision. I, honestly, am full up on adventures. I realize that living in Istanbul, Turkey for a month probably seems like the epitome of exoticness and excitement. For me, it just means another month in a place where I don’t know the language and in which I’ll probably get tired of avoiding eye contact and thinking I should cover my head.

Sometimes I cannot believe my life and where God has taken me. At times like this, I feel like I am along for the ride. I dislike feeling like this. A lot. I like to feel like my life has a plot, but I just seem to be getting further and further away from any sense of home, belonging and community that my soul desperately wants.

How is that for honest? I had a good cry over accepting this job. I stood in the forest near the Giriulai beach and cried my eyes out, yelled at God a bit for the way I seem to keep having to give up what I want most. This time, it’s giving up my time with friends this summer. I need them. Loving them and receiving their love is not a bad thing.

But, my life is not my own.

And that’s it, isn’t it? My life is not my own to plot or plan or pace. I know that going to Turkey for this month of July is another open door, to people and contacts and connections that He wants me to reach with His love.

Oh, but I need to feel it too. Need it fully.

A friend sent this to me

Praying

It doesn't have to be
the blue iris, it could be
weeds in a vacant lot, or a few
small stones; just
pay attention, then patch
a few words together and don't try
to make them elaborate, this isn't
a contest but the doorway
into thanks, and a silence
in which
another voice may speak.

- Mary Oliver

Happy Easter from Karkle, Lithuania

Clockwise: Nan, (Thailand), Liuba, Lena (Ukraine), Altynai (Kyrgzstan), Ledina (Albania), Mila (Lithuania), Jerilyn (Canada), and Jen (US).

This Easter weekend, myself and my friend and fellow teacher, Jerilyn were able to go with a wonderful group of women from LCC to spend 24 hours at a nearby retreat house in Karkle. Jerilyn taught on the discipline of fasting, I took care of the pre and post-fasting meals, and all of us spent most of our day Saturday in fasting, prayer, study and meditation. It was a lovely and meaningful way to celebrate this most-significant time of the Christian year. We were all blessed to learn from each other as God spoke to each of us in unique ways throughout the day.

Spring Break Photos

Well, since it is now April, I am officially closing the submission date for your "Spring Break Photo Challenge." I got only a few, but they are all lovely in their own way. (Don't I sound like a kindergarten teacher!) Here they are, my top three favorites:

Taken by Annie Nelson, location undisclosed

Taken by Heather Terry, Oregon coast

Taken by my mom, Katie (Troeger) Stewart, in Norwich, CT, with my Poppa

Redirection

This is really, really good, and not just because she metions me. ;)

OH, and so is this.

There, procrastination duties sufficiently accomplished. Enjoy.

A Recipe

3 parts hills, dusty trails and sore legs
1 part comfortable room with a view
2 parts cappuccino
5 parts sunshine and blue sky
2 parts turquoise sea
1 part lemons and olive trees

So my dilemma is this: I don’t think Italy can be expressed in prose. If I start trying to write about how beautiful it was, how dry the air, how blue the water, how much sun… I will devolve into poetry. And yet, I want to distill a bit of the trip here, to share what God shared with me. I feel silly because this is going to be a REALLY LONG entry. However, I just took a 10-day vacation by myself. That means I didn’t get to talk to anyone about what I was thinking, thus, LOTS of writing. To which you are now subjected. Further down below are some excerpts from my journal, if you’re into that. But, first, the moral of the story.

I went on this trip with the concept that I would “give this time to God.” I was approaching the week of travel alone with the expectation of really seeking God, hearing from Him, further being convicted and refined by Him. In short, I had a definite agenda, and I was expecting God to show up and fulfill it when it was time. Come on, it’s your cue, God!

It only took me until about Monday afternoon or so before I was able to see the silliness of my thinking. Who am I to “give time to God?” “Oh no,” I heard Him tell me – “I am giving this time to you. Accept it.” Whether it had something to do with feeling guilty for taking a vacation or whatnot, I had been having a hard time allowing myself to enjoy things – no strings attached, no deep spiritual work to be hashed out, just blessings. Early on in the week, I got a clear message from the Lord that I need to chill out and stop analyzing everything so much, to accept the blessing of the time there, the beauty of it, and trust that I am, indeed, on the right path with Him.

He showed this to me in a funny way. One of the reasons I thought it would be good to go to Cinque Terre is, ironically, because there are lots of American tourists there, even in off-season. Since I knew I would be alone, and likely not even opening my mouth to talk to anyone for 6 or 7 days, I thought it would be nice to be able to eavesdrop and jump into conversations when I was getting lonely. This resulted in me observing lots of stressed-out American moms, peering over their guidebooks, kids and husbands in tow, trying to figure out where this trail led, or when that train arrived, or how to get into the center of town, etc, etc. There was always a panicked look of “we might be lost!” or “we might miss the train!” And this always made me laugh a little bit – these are tiny towns. There is only one street. If you miss the train, there will be another one in 30 minutes! It is IMPOSSIBLE to miss the paths; everyone else is heading in the same direction.

I don’t say this to sound superior, but because it became an object lesson for me. I think that I can approach my spiritual walk in a similar way. I can get overly obsessed about, what is the next step? Am I on the right path? Am I going to miss the next train!?! And so, in that inability to slow down and trust that God is making a way for me, I miss the beauty of where I am. I saw these fellow visitors missing the beauty around them, and I wanted to tell them to take a cue from the Italians and to sit down and drink a tiny cup of coffee very, very slowly. To look at the ocean, and the way birds move, and the motion of laundry waving back and forth in the breeze.

God showed me that all the guidebooks in the world are not as good as one faithful Guide. If I know Him, and stick close to Him, - and I do, and I am – He is going to tell me where to go next, WHEN it is time to go there, and not before. In the meantime, enjoy the beauty and the blessings, and do what you are supposed to do with the next 10 minutes.

Simple enough, right?

Well, since I gave up on expecting any major spiritual fireworks or revelations on the trip, I should have at least known I would be tested on my lesson! Here is my journal from Saturday, March 17^th:

11:00 a.m. – 3 hours after my plane was supposed to have left Genova

This is the day I am asked to trust. 3 ½ hours of sleep after a culture-shock day in the oversexed European city of Genova. The day begins with being locked in the hallway of my B&B. I’ve left the keys in the flat and pulled the door shut, gone down to the main door to find it locked from the inside. I can’t get back into the flat, and I can’t get out. I frantically ring the bell – but it’s 5 am and the landlady isn’t waking. Finally, I find the door button – obscured in a dark corner of the entryway.

Running to catch the city bus to the airport, I step in a sidewalk crack and roll my ankle, with my 20 lb pack strapped to my back, and almost fall over when the shock of pain shoots up my leg. I catch myself and limp the rest of the way to the stop. The bus is late.

Zipping up my coat in the March morning coolness, the zipper splits.

I’m third to check in at the airport, thankful they don’t make me check my bag. In my hurry to make it to the airport, I have forgone a shower. Security confiscates my shampoo.

Waiting over an hour for our plane to land, FOG – little drops of H20 – detours our plane to Torino. Sorry folks, this is RyanAir. We don’t rebook you – you have to get yourself to another airport, yes, at your expense, who do you think we are? Lufthansa? (Here my heart begins to race, the fact of my 3 ½ hours of sleep makes itself known). The offer of rebooking through Pisa (2 hours south by train) will put me in Frankfurt 1 ½ hours after my flight to Riga leaves, and all seats on the Sunday flights to Lithuania and Latvia are sold.

I check other airlines to get me to Frankfurt. 600 euros 1 way. My mind runs through every conceivable option since I’ll have to pay for whatever new ticket they offer. Fly through Berlin? Get to Frankfurt and take a train to Warsaw, then bus to Klaipeda? Funny how yesterday I had thought about just how much I love trains and how lovely it would have been to simply forgo this flight to Germany and have taken the train all the way there. Prescient, it seems!

So, counting the kilometers in euros, I accept the reroute through Pisa at 5 p.m., and figure I will deal with what to do in Frankfurt once I get there. I’ve slept overnight in Hahn before, so I can do it again!

Meanwhile, I am fighting to hold back tears. I HEAR God telling me that He will take care of me one step at a time. My head races ahead – imagining HOW on earth I’m going to get back to Lithuania, HOW I am going to pay for it all, HOW I will sleep, when, and where, and what will I eat… what if, what if..

But, I know the extent of the next 2 – maybe 6 – hours, and that is all I can see. I can weigh options, but have to hold them all loosely and wait to see what happens. It is time for ruthless trust, and a settling down into His palpable presence with me. My heart seizes up most at my aloneness, and wishes I had someone to pray with. I pray for angels and other pilgrims to come alongside.

Head up, out of the itinerary, and onto the Guide.

Here is a breaking, a breaking of all my plans. The choice to practice the radical now-ness of surrender. Not only can I not look ahead to next week or tonight, I can only control my submission to my Father this moment, on this train, for these couple hours, and nothing else. One thing at a time, only.

God make me your cup of praise on this train, in this day, through these hours. Me, your vessel.

2:30 p.m., Pisa Aeropuerto

- And so the weirdness continues… not sure what to make of this one – praying that the Spirit would guide me, I see an American woman on the train platform in Pisa. She looks to be reading a pocket New Testament. I summon the courage to ask, “excuse me do you speak English? Are you reading the Bible?”

“Actually, it’s the Book of Mormon – it’s scripture.”

I plunge ahead anyway. This is not a day I can do apologetics. I say, “I have been praying that I would find a fellow Christian today. I am having a horrible day,” and I unload a bit of my story to her.

“Well, you have certainly found one,” she says, a little cautious in her tone, sizing me up, I’m sure, “here, read this.” And underlined in red in her book (I don’t look too close, read quickly, as if it’s some poison mirror!) she has marked a verse that I hastily read to the effect of “I will lead you and guide you in the way you should go.” Psalm 32:8. But this isn’t that verse. It echoed the Bible enough that I am left only with the memory of what I recognize. I ask her to pray for me, barely able to get a sentence out without choking on tears. She promises she will and asks my name. “I have been reading through the Psalms today,” I say, and add, “I’ve just been praying for the Spirit to guide me.”

And then my train arrived and I got on it to go.

My first thoughts were confused – if I had heard His voice rightly sitting there on the bench. Of if it was a test of my insight and awareness of truth. And I think too of the stories of believing Gentiles – Cornelius in Acts – devout, but without the full revelation of the trust, and how God heard their prayers. So, Father, hear the Mormon woman’s prayers for me – if You can, if she is praying to You. I am humbly in need of your power and trust You to work (surprisingly) in whatever ways You can.

3:15 p.m., Pisa Aeropuerto

Linda’s homemade jam, a gift to take back to Alison, surrendered at security, after a full backpack search. Alas.

4:12 p.m., Pisa Aeropuerto

It’s times like this when I realize that having another person to travel with wouldn’t necessarily make things less stressful, but at least there would be someone to laugh at it all.

Now I have decided to use the unoccupied handicapped bathroom. I discover, after having thoroughly lathered up my hands with soap – the sink is broken. No water. I couldn’t open the door if I tried because of the lack of friction. No paper towels, just a hand dryer. I am laughing, and laughing, and laughing. The people in the hallway probably think a crazy person is using the handicapped room, but I cannot stop laughing, hard, out-loud. Finally, a dribble of water eeks out of the spigot, and I make the most of it.

4:35 p.m., Pisa Aeropuerto, my luck changes –

RyanAir accepts my priority boarding pass still leftover from my Genova flight. Heh, heh – at least I’m getting ONE little perk from this fiasco. A few people ahead of me in line is the kind blond young woman who I’d commiserated with at the Genova airport this morning. We both get on this flight early and chat about the craziness of the day as people board. When a pudgy Italian grandma sits next to me and asks “Italiana?” I reply “no, Americana,” and decide that I’d rather move up a row and sit in the middle next to my new friend. “Good,” she says, “I was looking forward to a nice chat.” I climb over, and she and I talk the whole flight – I don’t even remember take off and touch down! We launch into the typical questions about what do you do, and etc, etc. She’s a German, married to an Italian, a doctor. We discuss the German and Italian medical systems, architecture, what I do at LCC, Dietrich Bonhoffer, God, hope, how science leads back to belief in God, post-communist economy, ecumenism… When we cross the Alps, she moves to let me look out at the mountains. As we land, we introduce ourselves by name and exchange email addresses. Ursula invites me, if I need to, to stay at her family’s place in Heidelburg. She waits for me getting off the plane. Coming into the airport, we meet her parents and they invite me too, to stay with them if I need to, or offer to drive me to a hotel. By this time, I am confident that everything is going to be fine, and getting a seat on a flight to Lithuania the next day is easy (give or take some euros!), and then Ursula and I hug goodbye. She mentions how much she enjoyed talking to me, how it was the bright spot in her day – as it was for me too. I decide to book a hotel, needing sleep and a shower. They pick me up, deposit me at a place with free internet, a sauna, coffee on-demand, The Daily Show playing on television, take-up supper of a kebab and French fries delivered to my door, a clean shower (with shampoo! Mine having been taken), puffy square pillow and clean German duvets.

God made a way for me – and sets my days in order for His reasons for me.