From my current novel

"So many people spend so much time protecting themselves for the ordinary and the worn that it seems as if half the world runs on a defensive principles that robs it of the tested and the true. But if the truth is common, must it be rejected? If the ordinary is beautiful, must it be scorned? They needn't be, and are not, by those who are free enough to see anew. 

The human soul itself is quite ordinary, existing by the billion, and on a crowded street you pass souls a thousand times a minute. And yet within the soul is a graceful shining song more wonderful than the stunning cathedrals that stand over the countryside unique and alone. The simple songs are the best. They last into time as inviolably as the light." 

-- from Memoir from Antproof Case by Mark Helprin

 

Here are some of the beautiful souls I passed this summer. Above, factory workers in China. 

And children leading songs in a house-church in the No Sil slum of Navi Mumbai, India. 

Here, a small group of Russian children enjoying an art class in a sort of day-refuge open to them in Riga, Latvia. 

Random picture of Week Seven

I don't know why I can go forever between posts and then put up two in a row, but this worthy picture was taken outside an artist's studio/shop in Modling, Austria. All I can say is: nice legs.

A month?!

How can it be a over a month since I last posted? The last few weeks of summer turned into one long water slide on which I took my last work trip (to Latvia), visited Vienna, Austria, for a few days (because it was so close), and saw my interns drop blithely into Italy for a summers-end retreat. 

On the last day of the retreat, my co-worker Ben and I were dodging crowds of tourists on the streets of Venice, searching for postcards, when something funny happened and one of us made a joke. The other automatically responded in three different accents: "This is a very premium place (eastern European accent)... Si, si, mama mia (Italian)... Oh, very nice, you will like (Indian with a head-bobble thrown in)." Hanging out with the interns who'd spent their summer all over the world had given even our humor an international flavor. I didn't know whether to say 'I gotta go home,' or 'we're all nuts.' Maybe both. 

As soon as I got back into Tennessee, though, I started to slather on the Southern drawl and use the two-syllable "heh-ay" instead of the clipped "hey" or "hello" or "ciao." It was a beautiful moment, walking back into my house for the first time; amazed that it hadn't blown up or flooded, and thinking that it looked more charming than I remembered it. I've been fighting random cobwebs ever since, but what a joy to rediscover things that I had loved. I went to the produce market around the corner, pulled up a carrot from my garden (thoughtfully rescued by my friends over the summer), and picked up my mail with all the letters for previous residents and bills that I had already paid. 

I spent the first few hours in Dayton visiting dear friends, sharing a sandwich and checking out summer projects, like new paint. And on my first Sunday back in my church, I realized halfway through the service that I hadn't been in an English-speaking church in a month and a half. I savored the rest of that sermon, the hymns, and the prayers, because I could understand what they meant-- not just the cognitive meaning that you could look up in a dictionary, but the heart-felt, culturally rooted understanding of connection and memory. And I rejoiced.

Random Picture of (Last) Week 2

Here's a random park in Udine (Italy) where I camped out with my journal for a few hours. From my bench I could see people playing soccer, strolling, walking their dogs, walking their kids, yelling at their kids, riding their bikes, juggling, making out, sitting and thinking, goofing off and being middle-schoolers, playing on the playground, eating ice cream. Apartment complexes ring the park, making it the outdoor living room for many people who go outside to relax.  

Making Culture

Last week I finished Culture Making by Andy Crouch (my favorite book of the year). That same morning I walked through the city center in Udine, Italy, looking for a place to have breakfast and a good cappuccino. I sat at a sidewalk cafe, across from this pretty awesome example of people making culture: changing our surroundings enough to remind us that we were created to marvel at beauty, skill, and to enjoy it together. We are made in the image of God, to exclaim, "Oh yes, that's good!" 

I love that these musicians set up their stands in the middle of a shopping district, so that (whether they mean to or not) as I walk through the plaza thinking about food, or sales in department stores, or bus schedules suddenly I'm confronted by the sound of beauty. It doesn't feed me, or help me catch my bus, but that sound changes the pace of my world for a while and makes time slow down. 

And I love that the man in the mustache starts whistling and stamping to the beat. Culture isn't just high art and snobbishness, yes? (I'd pull out some quotes from the book at this point, but I don't have it with me).

Candid Photo of (Last) Week

A baby store in Carlisle, England called... you guessed it... Fluffy Bums.

Constrained

Last month in India, we took our good friends John and Caleb out for dinner to refresh their memories of American food and culture. They stared at the Pizza Hut menus blankly and squirmed in the booth. Salads (including a Caesar salad with jalapenos and spicy cheese balls), soups, appetizers, pizzas, sandwiches, drinks, and desserts filled nearly ten pages with colorful photos and descriptions (it’s a swankier restaurant overseas).

Finally John spoke up, “Can you tell us what to get?”

“Whatever you want—it’s your choice.”

Silence. The guys looked at each other and then back at us.

“For six weeks we’ve eaten what’s been put in front of us, gone where people have taken us… we haven’t made decisions for ourselves in a long time. So… ‘constrain’ us, to use the Indian word.”

We laughed at them both and fiendishly enjoyed their struggle to choose every element of their meal: by themselves. “Constrain me” became the funny phrase of the week, whipped out for decisions great and small.

The structure of families, communities, and churches in India has a much more hierarchical pattern than American counterparts. India is the largest democracy in the world, but most decisions that affect daily life are made by the heads of smaller, more locally-based circles. Most parents still arrange marriages for their children. Within churches, the pastor directs his elders and laymen with clout we would associate more with employers and CEOs. John and Caleb, the only Americans serving in the ministry, had already experienced intimately a culture that respects and unquestioningly accepts what is handed down by the older and wiser.

As a well-educated American this system discomforts me, as I like to be a valued part of any decision-making process that, directly or indirectly, involves my life.

                                                ------------------

This odd phrase, “constrain me,” moved sharply to the front of my mind on Sunday when a pastor, visiting the Italian church, spoke on Acts 20:17-24. In the story, Paul tells his co-workers and friends in Ephesus: “And now, look, I’m going to Jerusalem, constrained by the Spirit, not knowing what will happen to me there… except that imprisonment and afflictions wait for me.” I somehow feel that it was natural for the apostle Paul to be constrained by the will of God, allowing his own colossal passion to be directed towards taking the gospel to all kinds of dangerous places. But I don’t think I know what it looks like or feels like to be constrained for I avoid it at all costs.

Being constrained doesn’t mean being confined; it means taking up someone else’s will and values so wholly that they replace your own and become your own. You accept what is placed before you, whether it’s a bowl of rice or a pizza or a doomed prison sentence with a quiet word of thanks, a blessing, to God.

For Paul it was the overwhelming, comforting presence constraining him that trumped the fear prompted by warnings of suffering and captivity. And here I am reminded that being steered by another is not the evil thing or the good. What matters is the will that is at the helm. We are all constrained, if not by someone else’s will then by our own.