I Wish…

Posted in life, words by

…full gas tanks would stay full.

…children would be smiled at and have their hair tousled as much as they deserve.

…learning Polish would be easier.

… roads wouldn’t have pot-holes.

…I’d own a private ocean cove.

…cells wouldn’t mutate to form  tumors.

…there would be answers for every question.

…Business English wouldn’t be about business.

…we could see the real battle we’re in and that it’s bigger than any person.

…I could understand poetry.

…autumn wouldn’t mean the end of summer.

…women would live knowing they are beautiful without striving.

…I could remember how short life’s imperfections are compared to eternity’s perfection.

What If I Miss My Life Calling?

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My wise writer friend Dorcas wrote an article here that is both simple and profound. All of us can go round and round, wondering if we made right decision yesterday or last month, wondering how we should make the next decision, wondering What Is God’s Will.

Today’s decisions do make a difference for tomorrow, and we need to think about consequences. That’s part of wisdom. But being finite, we will go crazy trying to do all the mental gymnastics of “What if…”  God tells us to ask Him for wisdom because He knows we could never be big enough or wise enough to figure it out alone. My goal is to live so that His peace is the umpire, calls the shots, and I can make decisions based on whether He gives peace about it.

Until heaven,  no one can plumb the depths of the question about  God’s sovereignty vs. man’s free will. Meanwhile, His peace is perfect, and His wisdom is great. And His virtues are always the right thing to choose.

Maybe what we see as the big life decisions of career and education and location are actually the small ones. The big decisions are the ones that transcend every place and relationship and job — integrity and kindness, mercy and generosity, love and joy and justice.

–Dorcas Smucker

As Kingfishers Catch Fire

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As king fishers catch fire, dragonflies draw flame;
As tumbled over rim in roundy wells
Stones ring; like each tucked string tells, each hung bell’s
Bow swung finds tongue to fling out broad its name;
Each mortal thing does one thing and the same:
Deals out that being indoors each one dwells;
Selves — goes itself; myself it speaks and spells,
Crying What I do is me: for that I came.

I say more: the just man justices;
Keeps grace: that keeps all his goings graces;
Acts in God’s eye what in God’s eye he is —
Christ. For Christ plays in ten thousand places,
Lovely in limbs, and lovely in eyes not his
To the Father through the features of men’s faces.

–Gerard Manley Hopkins

Coconuts and Sandy Feet

Posted in Family, life, travel by

Last week a friend came to my house and for a hostess gift, gave me a bag of fruit that included a fresh coconut. Because I don’t have a hammer in the house, I took the coconut to some young friends who freed it from its tough shell. Now I have the inside (the milk is dried up) and I want to try to grate it and use it for something toothsome. I’ve never used fresh coconut, so I’m eager to try.

The coconut made me think of when I was five years old. My parents took me and my two younger siblings in a pickup loaded with stuff, and drove from VA to El Salvador. My mom was creative in finding ways to pass the time–I remember little bags of M&M’s and crayons. I haven’t retained many details of the trip, but general impressions like the smell of gas at the filling stations and packing and unpacking at the border, and people speaking a language I couldn’t understand. I would take naps on the floor on the passenger side, my body in the shape of an L, with my legs between the seat and the door, and my sister between me and the seat.

My grandparents, aunts, and uncle lived at a children’s home in El Salvador, and this is where the coconut memory comes in. I remember watching my uncle, a young teen, shinny up a coconut tree and cut off a furry brown ball with the machete hanging from his belt. Down on the ground, he sliced off the top of the coconut with his machete and let us drink the milk inside. I don’t remember how it tasted, only the event.

Maybe my love of the open road and the next horizon started when I was five.  Maybe it’s in my genes from parents and grandparents who love globetrotting. I don’t know. I remember feeling peaceful and calm and happy, squished in that pickup, though I’m sure I was cross sometimes. I think I remember crying once because I was hot and miserable.

Sometimes my itchy feet get  me into trouble because although I’m fond of comfort, I’m not satisfied with just staying and settling into endless routine. Maybe sometime I’ll grow up and be ok with dailyness, and not pine for adventure  and new vistas every day. I have sandy feet too. I’ve traveled enough that I’ve been able to revisit some places, and that has its own thrill. Like traveling with my family and happening to drive past the church in Switzerland that was the live recording studio when I was with Faith Builders Chorale five years earlier.

One of my impossible dreams to have a sail boat. I know I could never actually do the work, but it’s a fun dream.  A friend suggested that I name it “Sandy Feet” which is a brilliant idea. It means I’ll always come back.

A Curious Blogger

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The old grey donkey, Eeyore stood by himself in a thistly corner of the Forest, his front feet well apart, his head on one side, and thought about things. Sometimes he thought sadly to himself, “Why?” and sometimes he thought, “Wherefore?” and sometimes he thought, “Inasmuch as which?” and sometimes he didn’t quite know what he was thinking about.  — A. A. Milne

I’m most decidedly not an Eeyore, but blogging can carry its own kind of angst. I’ve learned to be pretty ok with what I put out here. I basically know what I can’t do, what doesn’t feel authentic, what isn’t ‘me.’ While I like to see the hit counter go up, that’s not what motivates me, because I’m not out to rope in new readers just for the sake of more eyes reading this. I don’t have the mod gushy, glossy lingo that lots of bloggers do, and I don’t care. It feels good not to have to prove anything. I don’t post pictures even though all the good bloggers do, because in this visual era, I like the challenge of trying to make words work for me.

There’s a lot of things I could write, but choose not to, because while I don’t have much (!) to hide, I value modesty, discretion, and mystery. I can keep secrets. I take joy in living a wonderful moment and savoring it in real time with real people without compulsively sharing it with the world.

I think it’s true that the blogging world has a gazillion narcissists (that’s a funny word to spell) and I don’t think that I blog just to talk to myself about myself, but neither am I looking for lots of dialogue and Q&A. I don’t ask readers for feedback, because I figure they’ll let me know if they care enough to say something. Although I really do love comments, even negative ones. Maybe someday I’ll want more interaction, but not now–even though my book needs publicity–because I don’t have the energy  to be an MC on a virtual stage.

But in describing my blog and its goals, it’s not fair or accurate to define it by what it’s NOT, and for a long time I didn’t know how to  verbalize what this blog IS. Finally, yesterday, I think I found it. It was when I was reading Mere Orthodoxy which referred me to Trevin Wax’s post about curiosity in a blogger that the penny dropped, and I said “Hey, that’s me! That’s why I blog–because I’m curious.”

I’ve seen some things, and heard a lot of stories, but I like to think that I’m not jaded, and that I still can be easily surprised, and that I won’t lose a sense of wonder about whatever’s around me. I want to keep asking why, and wherefore, and whither to.

I’m a pilgrim on a narrow road, with nothing to prove about myself, but now and then the exhort-er in me wants to say “Hey–look what I found! I wonder why–” to  other pilgrims. And I think that’s why I blog.

Warning

Posted in life, words by

Warning:

When I am an old woman, I shall wear purple

with a red hat that doesn’t go, and doesn’t suit me.

And I shall spend my pension on brandy and summer gloves

and satin candles, and say we’ve no money for butter.

I shall sit down on the pavement when I am tired

and gobble up samples in shops and press alarm bells

and run my stick along the public railings

and make up for the sobriety of my youth.

I shall go out in my slippers in the rain

and pick the flowers in other people’s gardens

and learn to spit.

You can wear terrible shirts and grow more fat

and eat three pounds of sausages at a go

or only bread and pickles for a week

and hoard pens and pencils and beer nuts and things in boxes.

But now we must have clothes that keep us dry

and pay our rent and not swear in the street

and set a good example for the children.

We must have friends to dinner and read the papers.

But maybe I ought to practice a little now?

So people who know me are not too shocked and surprised

When suddenly I am old, and start to wear purple.

–by Jenny Joseph

Announcing: Hope Singers Concert!

Posted in music, Poland, recommendations by

Everyone is cordially invited to a reunion concert by the Hope Singers at 7:00 pm on Saturday, August 20, 2011, at Martindale Mennonite Fellowship Center, 352 Martindale Road, Ephrata, PA 17522. The program will include information about Anabaptist International Ministries (AIM) and their work in Poland. Opportunity will be given for a free-will offering in support of this ministry.

Beginning in 2004, and every two years since then, the Hope Singers have traveled and sung throughout Poland. As an extension of Anabaptist International Ministries in Minsk Mazowiecki, Poland, the Hope Singers strive to bring encouragement to believers throughout the country and to bring an awareness of an Anabaptist presence in Poland. The choir is directed by Lloyd Kauffman of West Jefferson, Ohio, and includes about 30 singers from the US, Canada, and European countries.

The focus of Anabaptist International Ministries is pointing people to Christ and a lifestyle of wholehearted obedience to Him. Besides operating an English language school for all ages, the AIM team does private tutoring, Kid’s Klub, and Bible studies, holds weekly church services, and distributes the Seed of Truth magazine (in connection with Christian Aid Ministries).

For more information, please
~attend the above-mentioned concert,(and say HI to all my friends who are singing!)
~contact a board representative at homeoffice@aimpoland.org or 814-789-4394, or
~visit us on the web at www.aimpoland.org.
_______________________________

He Leadeth Me

Posted in Ireland, life, Poland, travel by

I’m in that twilight zone of being back in Poland, feeling at home but not home. I was home in Ireland for the last month. Now, these familiar smells and sounds flood my senses, and it’s as if I was never gone. Except that it’s all better because I was gone. I am refreshed and revived, my head feels clear, and my soul is calm. Maybe it would’ve happened here, but the break helped me see things with new eyes, and it’s good.

At home, things were incredibly, wonderfully comfortable. I fell in love again with everything–the lush scenery, (July, in Ireland, in the sunshine, is heaven–sunshine being the important qualifier there). The accents–I couldn’t believe the wonder of understanding the bus drivers and shop clerks, and always wanted to talk with them as long as they had time because it felt like such a novelty. The food–I’d only mention that I’m hungry for something, and mom would cook it. My church family–their support and love overwhelmed me. My family–especially the littles who I couldn’t fully get to know in 1 month because they are so deep and fascinating.

It’s not logical that I prefer living in a place without those aspects, but it’s reality. I guess it has something to do with being called to fill a place, and knowing without any niggling question that I belong at this place at this time. Even if there is no ocean down the road, and no shopkeepers with whom to make small talk. I am being led here for some reason, and somehow, it is good.

At my sister’s wedding 3 weeks ago, the ensemble sang an exquisite arrangement of “By His Hand.” As the words and harmonies washed over me, I felt deepest awe, mystery, and confidence: by His own hand He leadeth me…His faithful follower I will be.

It suits me to live somewhat in transit: at home but not rooted, fulfilled but not complacent. I’m led by a hand that is big and wise, by a will that is higher than mine, and I stumble and get distracted, but He keeps leading, and that is my confidence.

Yes, Gideon Yutzy is Married

Posted in Family, Ireland, life by

My blog dashboard tells me the terms people write when they come across my blog. Usually the phrases are normal and predicable, like ‘gift to receive’, or it’s an author’s name or some poetry line. This evening it cracked me up to read one search term: is gideon yutzy married.

The question deserves an answer, and besides, other readers have been wondering about it, so even if this isn’t really a newsy kind of blog, I’ll say a little bit. I’d been thinking about writing about the wedding, but didn’t know how, because it was so special and intimate that I didn’t feel like gushing or blabbing about it.

But yes, Gideon Yutzy married my sister Esther just over a week ago.

For a long time, I’ve thought that to celebrate a wedding for only one day isn’t nearly long enough. Now I’ve discovered the solution: the bride’s family must be in a more remote place like Ireland, to ensure that guests arrive before the day. The wedding was Sunday, and the first relatives came Tuesday, with more guests arriving every day after that. Our house was the hub of action to serve meals and socialize. Oh, yes, and to play volleyball in the evenings.

I soaked up the hours of seeing Esther and Gideon surrounded with their friends and relations, eating and talking and laughing. It was as it should be.

The day before the wedding, I cut blooms and buds of antique-white roses from one of mom’s gorgeous, over-flowing rose bushes, and walked down the road to cut flowering privet greenery from a lane. I played with roses and greenery in the sun for the morning and had way, way more fun than anyone else had that day. Esther’s bouquet had a few red roses added to the white ones like the bridesmaids carried. It felt idyllic and right: roses from mom’s garden, greenery from the lane. Less is more, and simple is better.

The wedding was in a lovely old church in the village. You could see the sea from it, and hear the gulls crying. The entire service was weighty with significance, beautiful and sacred, happy and holy. Afterward, I even had a little turn with the bell-pull, but I had a nephew in one arm, and couldn’t manage the rhythm very well.

That evening, our house and yard were alive with people socializing and playing and eating and discussing. I loved it. And I had a priceless conversation with my four-year old nephew about the wedding, the flowers we’d been carrying and where we’d been sitting in the church.

Me: And I saw you and you were sitting pretty close to me, weren’t you?
He: Yes, but why were you crying?
Me: Because I was happy AND sad, and so I cried. Does that ever happen to you?
He (very seriously): No, I’m just happy.

Yes, Lord

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Yes, Lord. Yes, to anything You ask of me, anytime, anywhere.

When I was much younger, one of my aunts loaned us a recording of Ann Kiemel. The title of her talk was “Yes, Lord” and I must have listened to it about 500 times, folding the towels, mopping the floor, whenever.

Later, I found her delightful books. Ann’s books break the capitalization rules. They’re written in a kind of blank verse poetry, telling her simple stories of how she sang to taxi drivers and took children out for ice cream, telling them that Jesus loves them and together, with Jesus and love, they could dream and change the world.

I could never quite place her accent, but it fascinated me, and I liked her stories and her raspy little voice singing little songs at any time. “Something beautiful, something good, all my confusion He understood…”

She grew up in Hawaii and never fit into that world, but her pastor dad kept telling her “It pays to serve Jesus” and she’d say “Why, Daddy? I’m nine years old and ugly and hardly anybody likes me. Why does it pay to serve Jesus?” Then her dad would say “Give God time.”

When she was a junior in college, she was asked to be an administrator at Cornell University. They’d never offered the job to someone so young, or to a woman. It sounded so glamorous, her chance to be somebody, but she felt God saying “No.”

I remember kneeling by a little couch and opening my hand and putting into my hand all the things that I really loved: my family, good health, ambition, dreams for a husband and a home. I put them all right there. ‘Yes Jesus, you can take anything out or put anything in that You see I need. Yes, Lord.I want to be your woman more than I want anything else in the world.’

But dreams are made from mountains, and her dreams led her through dark valleys. After the years she had been a teacher and youth worker and dean of women at Easter Nazarene College, she was a speaker and writer. She found herself unable to keep up with demands and said, “I can’t go on. I can’t be a dreamer. I’m just not cut out for this. I can’t handle the criticisms. People don’t even know me and they make judgements about me and it’s harder than I thought to change the world, and I’m not strong enough.”

At 3:00 in the morning, weeping in my little apartment, again I opened my hand. ‘Jesus, I give all of this to you. I just started out to dream for my neighborhood. I didn’t ask to be a messenger to the world. But Jesus, here it is. Here’s my future, here’s my loneliness, all the pressures, the criticisms, the books, the dreams. Take me again. And I will try to make Yes, Lord the continuing motto of my life.’

Ann has written over a dozen books but these are the ones I’ve read:
I’m Out to Change My World
Yes
I Love the Word Impossible
I Gave God Time (the story of her marriage at 35)
Taste of Tears, Touch of God (the story of many miscarriages and adopting 4 sons)
Search for Wholeness

I found her “Yes Lord” speech on the internet today, and loved how all the stories came back to me as I listened. Now, as an adult, I hear her differently, with more understanding and empathy, not so much with the wide-eyed wonder of a child. I know she put me on a path to living with a ‘Yes, Lord’ motto, and with His help, I intend to keep my hand open.

Yes, Lord. Yes, to anything You ask of me, anytime, anywhere.