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