Peace and Pieces

Posted in life, teaching English by

“Here I am, rushing around, but you’re so peaceful.”

“You give me peace and energy.”

Completely separate from each other, two friends told me these words in one day.

Later in the week, I had an English lesson with a new student for the first time. We were telling each other about ourselves, and I said that I am not a nun even though some people think I am when they see my veil. Further, I love the Bible and Jesus–that Jesus is my hero, and I try to live like He did. Except that when I hear myself say that, I cringe because it sounds so audacious.

Then my student volunteered an observation: “I like how you are happy when you talk about Jesus. I think it should be this way. Most people look angry and sad when they are in church. That’s why I don’t go anymore.”

It seems to me that those conversations and observations are connected. I am not by nature placid or serene. There are many things that deeply distress and anger and unsettle me. I don’t live in utopia; my life is wonderful but not perfect or without storms.

The peace my friends saw wasn’t something I concoct.  Which is a good thing because otherwise it would be limited to about as long as my cup of coffee lasts in the morning.  The best thing about  God’s peace is that it’s beyond, higher than, and superior to logic. It’s something I can’t put words to, can’t explain, can’t even quantify except to say that it’s bigger than anything around me–anything that would otherwise discombobulate me.

What my friends see as peace is actually like me being wrapped in a thick fuzzy blanket. I think it has something to do with Jesus being my hero. He keeps me from going to pieces.

Excerpts from ‘The Yearling’

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Not being so fond of animals, I never considered picking up The Yearling. I wasn’t interested in a story about a deer.

But my friend recommended it to me after she read it, and she was right. I loved it. It’s much more than a story about a deer. It’s about people struggling in harsh surroundings.  It addresses loss and grief, love and loyalty, and how each colorful, real character responds to those. It even has a wandering sailor character, which made me smile.

Several places in the book made tears creep out of my eyes. I still don’t like the inevitable ending, and when the most dreadful thing happened at the end, I skimmed over it because I didn’t want to know the details.

Like all good stories, it gave insight to how people think and feel and talk and respond to life.  I think that’s why I liked the story so much. It seemed so real. Simple, but deep, and beautifully honest.

I laughed aloud when Jody threw a potato at a girl and his dad lectured him. His justification: “I jest hate her. She made a face at me. She’s ugly.”

“Well, son, you cain’t go thru life chunkin’ things at all the ugly women you meet.” I don’t know why that advice made me laugh.

This is from gentle, wise Mr. Baxter’s prayer when they were ready to bury Fodder-Wing, the crippled boy:

…Now you’ve done seed fit to take him where bein’ crookedy in mind or limb doesn’t matter. But Lord, hit pleasures us to think now you’ve done straightened out them legs and that pore bent back and them hands. Hit pleasures us to think on him, movin’ round as easy as ary one. And Lord, give him a few red-birds and mebbe a squirrel and a ‘coon and a ‘possum to keep him comp’ny, like he had here.  All of us is somehow lonesome, and we know he’ll not be lonesome, do he have them leetle wild things around him, if it ain’t askin’ too much to put a few varmints in Heaven. Thy will be done. Amen.”

Then the Baxter dad and son went home. The dad was talking about the burial to his stern wife who’d buried five babies:

He said, “I never seed a family take a thing so hard.”

She said, “Don’t tell me them big rough somebodies took on.”

He said, “Ory, the day may come when you’ll know the human heart is allus the same. Sorrer strikes the same all over. Hit makes a different kind o’ mark in different places. Seems to me, times, hit ain’t done nothin’ to you but sharpen your tongue.”

She sat down abruptly.

She said, “Seems like bein’ hard is the only way I kin stand it.”

He left his breakfast and went to her and stroked her hair. “I know. Jest be a leetle mite easy on t’other feller.”

Look Over My Shoulder

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It’s a most delicious, replete feeling: I don’t need anything right now, so I can even keep away from second-hand shops. Except that it’s nice to look at the books. Several in town have English books, and recently I found The Boy in Striped Pajamas.  Which is a good read even if it’s an awful, sad story, so of course I bought it for one zloty.

You can always use more books. And chocolate.  I can, I mean. Right now my reads are: A Meal with Jesus  as well as The Yearling, and always, interspersed at odd times so as not to get too tired of it: Polish grammar and vocabulary.

Recently it was The Secret Life of Bees for the umpteenth time. I’ve recommended that book to probably 100’s of  people. Someone took me up on it once and then asked me how I could read something that had so many swear words in it. I don’t know. I don’t remember any swear words. But maybe if you’re sensitive to that, don’t pick it up.  And don’t believe the pish-posh that’s on the jacket–something about divine female power. Their religion was strange, but I read the story for the wise words from August, and for the way that Lily expresses herself in such human, honest ways.  Most of all, I like the way August loves and guides and mentors this mother-less girl in such an exquisite way.  She’s my hero.

I’ve followed Ali’s African Adventures for several years, but now it’s more interesting again, because she and her husband are back on the Mercy Ship, after a year’s break. I love her way with words, the medical details, and emotive stories she writes about the broken babies and women she gets to care for. I once had the privilege to go on board the Logos ship, (no, they’re not sister ships) the one that takes books all over the world, so I can sort of picture the kind of community they live in, the size of the ship, and the international camaraderie and family that happens there.

Sometimes I wish that I would read more high-brow books like classics  or even be more informed about things like Occupy Wall Street. But being of average intelligence and being most interested in real people, I spend most of my time reading and following simple stories that are connected with what it means to live in a beautiful but broken world that is held and healed by scarred hands. It suits me. I don’t need anything more heady.

Connect the Dots isn’t a Game!

Posted in life, Poland, recommendations, words by

My English student is a graphic designer and once showed me how she uses that Apple gizmo to make these amazing professional advertisements. This is the lady who’s my age,  studied artistic dance in university, and is a most creative student in the way she describes a word she wants to use but doesn’t know.   She loves all things Apple. From her,  I first heard about Steve Jobs, and afterwards, promptly found his famous Stanford commencement address, and liked it. Liked it very much, really.

I especially liked how he showed how demotions and perceived failures can actually turn out to be good. They can even benefit you sometimes. Such as when he was fired from Apple which pushed him to start Pixar Animation Studios.

Last week I was meandering down the street, licking my last ice cream cone of the season, celebrating the sunshine and my free afternoon. I wheeled around when I heard my name shouted behind me–something that pretty much never happens here–, and it was my graphic designer student! I’d not seen her since early summer, since she had a baby last month, and I’d been missing her, and I shouted her name and hugged her delightedly.

We walked across the street to her parked car to admire her baby and touch his cheeks, and talk about how her life has changed since his birth. Standing in the sun, licking a cone, talking with a student/friend, I somehow felt incredibly rich.

The next day, Steve Jobs died. Not that the two events are connected, but for me, these two people are connected in my mind: Steve Jobs and my student.

In that Stanford speech, Mr. Jobs talked about how one choice affects a million things later.  Maybe that’s why one of the most useful prayers for anyone is for wisdom for them to make good choices.  And maybe that’s part of the fun we’ll have when we’re old and can see how the dots in our stories connect to make something meaningful and beautiful. God did say it would all fit into a good pattern, didn’t He?

I naively chose a college that was almost as expensive as Stanford, and all of my working-class parents’ savings were being spent on my college tuition. After six months, I couldn’t see the value in it. I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life and no idea how college was going to help me figure it out. And here I was spending all of the money my parents had saved their entire life. So I decided to drop out and trust that it would all work out OK. It was pretty scary at the time, but looking back it was one of the best decisions I ever made. The minute I dropped out I could stop taking the required classes that didn’t interest me, and begin dropping in on the ones that looked interesting.

It wasn’t all romantic. I didn’t have a dorm room, so I slept on the floor in friends’ rooms, I returned coke bottles for the 5¢ deposits to buy food with, and I would walk the 7 miles across town every Sunday night to get one good meal a week at the Hare Krishna temple. I loved it. And much of what I stumbled into by following my curiosity and intuition turned out to be priceless later on. Let me give you one example:

Reed College at that time offered perhaps the best calligraphy instruction in the country. Throughout the campus every poster, every label on every drawer, was beautifully hand calligraphed. Because I had dropped out and didn’t have to take the normal classes, I decided to take a calligraphy class to learn how to do this. I learned about serif and san serif typefaces, about varying the amount of space between different letter combinations, about what makes great typography great. It was beautiful, historical, artistically subtle in a way that science can’t capture, and I found it fascinating.

None of this had even a hope of any practical application in my life. But ten years later, when we were designing the first Macintosh computer, it all came back to me. And we designed it all into the Mac. It was the first computer with beautiful typography. If I had never dropped in on that single course in college, the Mac would have never had multiple typefaces or proportionally spaced fonts. And since Windows just copied the Mac, it’s likely that no personal computer would have them. If I had never dropped out, I would have never dropped in on this calligraphy class, and personal computers might not have the wonderful typography that they do. Of course it was impossible to connect the dots looking forward when I was in college. But it was very, very clear looking backwards ten years later.       –Steve Jobs

 

Pied Beauty

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Glory be to God for dappled things—
For skies of couple-colour as a brinded cow;
For rose-moles all in stipple upon trout that swim;
Fresh-firecoal chestnut-falls; finches’ wings;
Landscape plotted and pieced—fold, fallow, and plough;
And áll trádes, their gear and tackle and trim.

All things counter, original, spare, strange;
Whatever is fickle, freckled (who knows how?)
With swift, slow; sweet, sour; adazzle, dim;
He fathers-forth whose beauty is past change: Praise Him.

–Gerard Manley Hopkins, 1844-89

What is Real?

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“What is REAL?” asked the Rabbit one day, when they were lying side by side near the nursery fender, before Nana came to tidy the room. “Does it mean having things that buzz inside you and a stick-out handle?”

 

“Real isn’t how you are made,” said the Skin Horse. “It’s a thing that happens to you. When a child loves you for a long, long time, not just to play with, but REALLY loves you, then you become Real.”

 

“Does it hurt?” asked the Rabbit.

 

“Sometimes,” said the Skin Horse, for he was always truthful. “When you are Real you don’t mind being hurt.”

 

“Does it happen all at once, like being wound up,” he asked, “or bit by bit?”

 

“It doesn’t happen all at once,” said the Skin Horse. “You become. It takes a long time. That’s why it doesn’t happen often to people who break easily, or have sharp edges, or who have to be carefully kept. Generally, by the time you are Real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out and you get loose in your joints and very shabby. But these things don’t matter at all, because once you are Real you can’t be ugly, except to people who don’t understand.”

 

“I suppose you are real?” said the Rabbit. And then he wished he had not said it, for he thought the Skin Horse might be sensitive. But the Skin Horse only smiled.

“The Boy’s Uncle made me Real,” he said. “That was a great many years ago; but once you are Real, you can’t become unreal. It lasts for always.”

 

The Rabbit sighed. He thought it would be a long time before this magic called Real happened to him. He longed to become Real, to know what it felt like; and yet the idea of growing shabby and losing his eyes and whiskers was rather sad. He wished that he could become it without these uncomfortable things happening to him.

–Margery Williams, The Velveteen Rabbit

Be Real

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To thine ownself be true–what does that mean? What does it mean to be yourself, no plastic ways, no personas, but to be authentic?

I don’t have final answers about it, but it seems to me that being authentic is connected to aligning ourselves with the way God intended for us to live and I know  His design is perfect and beautiful, not self-serving or muddy. I think that to be authentic means walking toward His design, living in simplicity and honesty, not needing props to hold up our image.

An article here on Her.meneutics gives some food for thought:

…my entire life has been a struggle to get out from behind the faces I put on: I want to be perceived as having it all together, as being the perfect wife, as being an intelligent Christian woman, as being compassionate, kind, and inspirational. I have justified my slavery to these goals because they are mostly noble, but the method is entirely wrong. When rooted in a desire to be liked rather than in the spirit of Christ, each one of these “fruits” is an illusion, a fake.

This leads me to my second point about authenticity: It can only be had in Christ. C. S. Lewis wrote, “Until you have given up your self to Him you will not have a real self. . . . The very first step is to try to forget about the self altogether. You real, new self will not come as long as you are looking for it. It will come when you are looking for Him. . . . Christ will indeed give you a real personality.”

Lewis makes this statement as one who understands the deceptiveness and destructiveness of sin. Only God knows who we really are — that is, who he created each one of us to be. Sin leads us to construct alternative versions of ourselves, selves we prefer, selves that are more comfortable, selves that bring us the most glory. We may try to construct selves that will honor God, but even our best intentions will be perverted when working off a manmade blueprint.

In Christ, however, we become our true selves. God opens our eyes to our sins, to the self-deception, to the things in our lives that are not of him. Then he transforms us, conforming us to the only perfect human being who ever lived. In Christ, we stop operating according to the constraints of social expectations, personal insecurities, and lies. Rather than live in ways that are subhuman, we finally live in a manner worthy of God’s vision for humanity.

That is authenticity. It is a “human being fully alive” (Irenaeus). It is not built in a day, nor is it maintained easily. Like humility, realizing we are closer to it ensures that we will lose it. Yet the nature of authenticity is also good news. Because authenticity cannot be faked, because it does not, ironically, rest in our natural selves, our only option for being truly authentic people is to lose ourselves, casting ourselves on Christ’s mercy, joyfully acknowledging that Christ’s power is made perfect in weakness. The more we realize our desperate state and need of God’s grace, the more authentically human we will be.

Simple Prayers, Simple Joys

Posted in life, Poland by

It’s a mystery to me, how prayer affects things. How do our words move God? Is prayer like a spiritual power source that you can turn on and off like a switch? Whatever it is, it IS effective, somehow. I see mine answered, and see others’ answered for me.

Recently a friend wrote these lines to me: I have this sixth sense that you’re struggling… but I’m not sure what is causing the struggle… I pray God fills your days with simple joys and abiding contentment.

This is a little list of the many simple joys and deep contentment that have come from her prayers:

–I was working at school, alone and lonely, going bonkers with the silence. My friend called and asked if I want to meet for iced coffee. DID I?! And we even did it the cheap way–she made it and brought it to me (ice and milk, no sugar) and sat and we drank together as long as I needed to talk. Which was considerable.

–Little fingers on four little hands, using face crayons all over my hands and arms, feet and legs. I was keeping two girls quiet during a ladies’ discussion session, and found the perfect way to occupy them. I was especially proud of my multi-colored toe nails and the long striped flag on one shin. I loved watching their busy girlishness and creativity.

–A pastel sunset and tree silhouettes mirrored in the water at  my favourite thinking spot. Crisp air, and two friends with me, sometimes talking, sometimes quiet.

–Laughter with my English students. Their giggles over mistakes, and amusement over new words that tickled their funny bone, like “loafer” and “flip-flop.”

–Sitting on the couch with my Polish teacher and feeling her touch my arm as she spoke. She didn’t know it, but her finger on my arm and shoulder helped me relax. Later, she fed me Polish pancakes with apples and cinnamon outside on the swing as evening fell softly around us.

–Bright smiles from strangers.

–An email message permeated with sarcasm, ended with an emoticon with the tongue sticking out. The cyber-space camaraderie felt priceless. Never thought I’d get anything from an emoticon, but what was that about prayer changing things?

Things I Don’t Understand

Posted in life by

1. How cars work.

2. Why people talk about the weather.

3. Facebook.

4. How civilized people can break their marriage vows and remarry and say God is in it.

5. Why it’s easier to understand Polish than to speak it.

6. How bright turquoises and reds and fuchsias soothe my soul.

7. Why reading Schindler’s List is harrowing me more than when I toured Auschwitz.

7. Redemption.

8.  Why general society thinks any alternative lifestyle is acceptable, but a counter-culture Christian life-style is not.

9. God’s patience with the people who carry His reputation.

What He Wants Most

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What we want most to receive is what He wants most to give. –Michael Card

Underlying and over-arching all our motives and goals, all our dreams and ideas of success is what He wants most to give us: Himself.

We want fellowship and friendship and intimacy, fearing separation, walls, dissonance. The terror of loneliness can paralyze us, making us go to any extent to avoid feeling alone, making us vow to never feel so miserable again.

We were not designed to live on solitary islands, and so we know deep down that something is wrong with the world whenever we feel isolated, something is amiss when we don’t belong.

I have been in places where I thought

 

I am

 

watching

 

this

 

from

 

another planet,

 

and

 

they

 

don’t have

 

any

 

air

 

here.

The suffocation of separation has an answer: Himself. He blows into the channels of the day, lifting and caressing, reviving and reassuring us that we are never alone, and what we fear is never reality, because we can never escape His persistent presence. Never, never, never.