the marks of the shackles

"Even the Congo has tried to slip out of her old flesh, to pretend it isn't scarred. Congo was a woman in shadows, dark-hearted, moving to a drumbeat. Zaire is a tall young man tossing salt over his shoulder. All the old injuries have been renamed: Kinshasa, Kisangani. There never was a King Leopold, no brash Stanley, bury them, forget. You have nothing to lose but your chains.

But I don't happen to agree. If chained is where you have been, your arms will always bear the marks of the shackles. What you have to lose is your story, your own slant. You'll look at the scars on your arms and see mere ugliness, or you'll take great care to look away from them and see nothing. Either way, you have no words for the story of where you came from." The Poisonwood Bible - Barara Kingsolver


I recently read The Poisonwood Bible, a book I had been meaning to get to for years. I was not disappointed. Barbara Kingsolver tells a compelling story of American missionaries caught up in the drama of the Congo's precipitate independence from Belgium. The story is masterfully told, or rather revealed, through the voices of five women, the wife and daughters of a brash, passionate, tormented southern Baptist (not to be confused with "Southern Baptist".) As a child of a Baptist minister I found some elements did not ring true (can there be a Baptist on earth who actually uses the Apocrypha?), but these were not enough to detract from the narrative, or from the author's considerable skill in creating five consistent personas with distinct voices.

There were several pages I dog-eared, but the passage I have come back to several times is this one. Kingsolver is commenting on the wholesale renaming of every place in the Congo/Zaire when the country was finally emancipated from Belgian control. In an effort to erase all vestiges of colonialism the new government apparently abolished the old place names and created new, African names to take the place of any names that made reference to Europe or Europeans.

I don't believe renaming is really the issue here, though it is a fascinating subject - how the ways in which we name things do or do not alter how we think or feel about them -. People have always chosen new names at baptisms, confirmation, taking Holy Orders, and other life changing moments in order to affirm that something new is beginning.

But I think the real question this passage deals with is what to do about wounds, injuries, injustices suffered in the past. Is it better to try to forget, to wipe out the memory, or to allow it to see the light of day; is it better to efface or to embrace our pain, our history, the scars that have made us who we are today.

A case can be made for either approach. Scripture itself encourages us through the example of the Apostle Paul to forget those things which are behind, to run the race before us; yet it also tells us to boast in our weaknesses, and reminds us to not forget what we used to be; to remember that we have been washed, cleansed, healed, made holy.

While there is nothing necessarily wrong with renaming places, people, events, (contemporary historians make a regular practice of it), we need to understand when dealing with our own history that calling something by a different name does nothing to change the underlying reality of what has been and what is. God is still the only one who can speak things into existence.

And I believe there is something to be said for scars. Even Jesus in his resurrected body retained his scars. They became part of his glory. We might do well to learn to love our own scars, even as we embrace our Lord's. If we forget, if we try to cover up where we've been, if we whitewash the past or hide it somehow we are left with the choices the narrator of this passage gives us: seeing ourselves a maimed and ugly, or spending a lifetime turning our faces away.

Christians have a quaint word for "the story of where you came from" - it's called your testimony. It's a story we should not be afraid to tell; a story we should embrace; a story we need to remember to know who we are today. Christ made it clear that he came as a Physician for the sick, the lame, the halt (I love that archaic term), the blind, the lepers. There is no inherent virtue, no glory in being uninjured, in having escaped somehow.

In The Poisonwood Bible Kingsolver describes an African man whose face is covered with ritual scars which are unpleasant to the the narractor at first, but come to seem so much a part of who he is that they become beautiful in her eyes. I like to think that we might all come to the place where we can treat our own scars, and those of others with reverence and tenderness, since they remind us that chained is where we all have been.



*The present Democratic Republic of the Congo has changed its names several times throughout history. It has been Congo Free State (1855-1908), Belgian Congo (1908-1960), Congo-Leopoldville/Democratic Republic of the Congo (1960-1966), Congo-Kinshasa (1966-1971), Zaire (1971-1997).

on our own in Malaysia

Last week I was sitting in traffic (again) behind a car with an intriguing bumper sticker in the back window - which is where bumper stickers go in Malaysia. It had a picture of a golden buddha on a blue-sky background and announced, "Anyone can go to heaven. Just be Good! " In small print it said justbegood.net.

I mused about this cheery announcement the rest of the way home. Although it was meant to appeal to me by its egalitarian, affirming message, I find the exhortation to "just be good" extremely depressing. What person over 12 years old actually labors under the delusion that he can "justbegood." "If that's the way to Heaven", I decided, "I'll never make it . Of course, I'll be lucky to make it home in this jam."

As I navigated the LDP highway, watching carefully for signs for Puchong, Putra Jaya, Taman Tun Dr Ismail (T.T.D.I. to locals), I found myself idly concocting a theology based not on bumperstickers, but on the trafffic itself - like, it doesn't matter which lane you choose; we'll all end up in the same lane eventually. . . . unitarian, I suppose. It's true for traffic, at least.

A few days later our family embarked one morning upon a long-planned trip to the US Embassy in Kuala Lumpur. We had several errands to perform there: changing my husband's new passport to read "Male" rather than "Female", registering our presence as Americans in Malaysia , getting a NH residency form notarized for a college application, and correcting a piece of misinformation on my daughter's passport. KL is not far when considered in kilometers, but it can easily take over an hour to drive there (not allowing for any wrong turns) and nearly as long to find a parking space. So we decided to avoid the traffic and take the train into the city. We would then hike the few blocks from the train station to the Embassy.

My husband took the day off work and we left the house at 9:30, carrying all our critical documents. I found I was inordinately excited about the prospect of setting foot on an outpost of the US; I was all ready to be thrilled by the sight of the Stars and Stripes flying in the hazy tropical sky.

We drove to the LRT station near our house, purchased tickets to Ampang Park and sat down to enjoy the ride. Since our station is the last one on the line we can nearly always find seats. We arrived at our stop about 10:15 and got our bearings. We figured the embassy was about a 1/2 mile from the station and we guessed at the direction in which to head. Everyone immediately noticed how many non-Asians were about in the embassy district. We see very few non-natives in our neighborhood. It's a funny thing but Westerners tend to pretend not to notice each other here; if you accidentally make eye contact you both look away as if there is nothing notable or interesting about the other person. I'm not sure why.

When we arrived at the Embassy after walking the half mile from the monorail along a busy road in the blistering sun, we found it shut and barred. There was no sign of Old Glory anywhere. We quickly checked the time to make sure we had not missed the window of opportunity. The US Embassy is open all of two hours a day, five days a week for any business any Americans in Malaysia might have. (I hope there is never an emergency. . . .) But we were well within the 9-11 AM time frame. Apparently there was a little booth you had to register at first. My husband approached the Malaysian (how disappointing) manning the desk and was about to ask which entrance to use, when we saw the sign, "Closed for Martin Luther King Day, January 15th, 2007"

But it's not even Martin Luther King Day in the US yet, we wailed. It's still Sunday night!! Then we saw the other sign noting that the US Embassy closed for ALL public holidays, Malaysian and American! When you consider how many holidays the two countries celebrate, the place must be open an average of 8 hours a week, not even 10!! I was ready to renounce my citizenship then and there, except I probably couldn't do it until the embassy opened! We felt annoyed that all our efforts were for naught, but we also felt abandoned here on foreign soil, as if we didn't matter anymore. "That's what you get for moving to the other side of the world, you ingrates," was the message the locked gates and unwelcoming signs seemed to convey.

So, we went to the Canadian Embassy instead, which is open 35 hours a week, where we picked up applications for Certificates of Canadian citizenship for all our children, (I was born in Canada, so they all can claim citizenship), and they even offered to give the kids all 1 year passports while their Citizenship Claims were being processed!! So there. (We didn't go out of spite; we had planned to do this anyway.) We lounged around in the air conditioned Canadian waiting room for awhile before we headed back out to the hot sun and the train and the traffic. We felt slightly less offended; at least some country wanted us!

Then we went to the beautiful old Central Market for shopping and lunch, where we avoided eye contact with many more Westerners and ate wonderful clay-pot black pepper chicken and rice. We were back home by 3 PM, though we felt as if we'd been away a lot longer. We turned on the air-conditioning, sent the little girls off to the swimming pool and decided we'd let some time go by before we tried to visit our Uncle Sam again. Maybe he'll decide he misses us after all.

Far away is only far away if you don't go there. . . .

I am finally feeling uprooted. All week my dreams have been about packing up houses in time for moving trucks to arrive, taking long rides on buses which were headed for airports. My children were always with me, and they were usually more on task than I was. I was always caught up doing something else and then feeling unready when the time for the truck to arrive or the bus to leave came.

I am surprised to be dreaming these things now, now that the move is "over", but I guess it's not over after all. I am still coming to terms with what we have done and where we are and what it's all about.

I have always been a dreamer. It's probably the only thing I have in common with John Lennon. I used to love waking up in the morning to my own stories, so real they sometimes seemed more like memories - I still do. I have always felt sorry for people who claim they never dream (though experts say we all do); I have always dreamed vividly and frequently, sometimes several times a night so it feels like I have been asleep for days when the clock tells me I woke up just an hour ago from a different dream.

Sometimes I try to go back to sleep to reenter the dream if it was a particularly wondrous one, if it gave me a feeling I did not want to lose in the light of day, but that seldom works. Even if sleep comes, the dream I am seeking is usually gone.

I have finally gotten over the habit of repeating my dreams to other people (usually the first person I see when I wake), since I know how completely bored I am by other people's dreams,
but I always want to hang onto them, knowing how quickly they will fade if I do not reinforce them in my memory by repeating them over and over. Even when I do, I find that most times the details are gone within minutes;later in the day I may not even remember the subject matter, but only retain the strange feeling the dream gave me.

For a while when I was in graduate school I kept a dream journal by my bedside where I recorded things immediately when I woke up. Later the stories surprised even me: I no longer remembered the things I had done and seen in my dreams, but there they were on the page, recorded in blue or black ink in my own hand.

When I reread the accounts, the details then seemed oddly important - the things I would forget even if I remembered the main story of the dream. One week, for example, my two brothers were in every dream I had; they were usually on the sidelines, maybe just walking through a scene, but they were always there. What did that mean? I never figured it out, but I feel sure it meant something.

So I am not sure what my dreams of moving, packing, trucks, buses, airplanes and children mean, but I suspect they have something to do with the fact that deep inside I realize I am not at home, I am still in motion. I don't know if Malaysia will ever feel like home, but then I don't know if New Hampshire will feel like home after our sojourn here. Someone has said that, "travelling in the company of those we love is home in motion," and I agree. I may never feel settled in a particular place again, but that's not all bad, as Mr. Baggins discovered.

two poems I like by Stevie Smith

Valuable

(After reading two paragraphs in a newspaper)

All these illegitimate babies...
Oh girls, girls,
Silly little cheap things,
Why do you not put some value on yourselves,
Learn to say, No?
Did nobody teach you?
Nobody teaches anybody to say No nowadays,
People should teach people to sayNo.

0 poor panther,
Oh your poor black animal,
At large for a few moments in a school for young children in Paris,
Now in your cage again,
How your great eyes bulge with bewilderment,
There is something there that accuses us,
In your angry and innocent eyes,
Something that says: I am too valuable to be kept in a cage.

Oh these illegitimate babies!
Oh girls, girls,
Silly little valuable things,
You should have said, No, I am valuable,
And again, It is because I am valuable I say, No.
Nobody teaches anybody they are valuable nowadays

Girls, you are valuable,
And you, Panther, you are valuable
But the girls say: I shall be alone If I say
‘I am valuable’ and other people do not say it of me,
I shall be alone, there is no comfort there.
No, it is not comforting, but it is valuable
And if everybody says it in the end
It will be comforting.
And for the panther too,
If everybody says he is valuable
It will be comforting for him.


Not Waving But Drowning

Nobody heard him, the dead man,
But still he lay moaning:
I was much further out than you thought
And not waving but drowning.
Poor chap, he always loved larking
And now he's dead
It must have been too cold for him his heart gave way,
They said.
Oh, no no no, it was too cold always
(Still the dead one lay moaning)
I was much too far out all my life
And not waving but drowning.

ambiguity and faith

"Ambiguity tolerance describes how a person perceives, interprets and reacts to ambiguous situations. These are situations that are unclear either because of lack of information or because of incoherence in the available information. "

I remember my family doctor telling me that I apparently did not have quite enough ambiguity tolerance to serve me in good stead as a mother. Whenever one of my children was ailing in any way - fever, rash, intestinal distress, swelling or wounds - I would follow an identical course of action. I would question my husband incessantly about whether he thought the child was OK, whether a doctor's visit was in order, whether he thought I could wait till the morning, whether he thought things were looking better, worse or the same. Very often I would wake him in the middle of the night to request his expert opinion. Amazingly, he nearly always obliged and did so without using any bad language, though I nearly always suspected his motives if he thought things were improving. I thought he would say anything to shut me up. . . I don't know now why I even bothered to ask since the only answer I believed without question was, "Yes, I think she looks worse."

Then, waiting till daybreak, at least, I would call another mom who had children near the same age and rehash the whole condition with her, asking what she thought I should do; what she would do if her child looked/felt/acted like this. If it was a Thursday night or a Friday morning these conversations had an added urgency to them, since no one wanted to make the wrong call with the weekend looming; no one wants to end up in the emergency room with a sick child because they neglected to visit the doctor's office when they had the chance.

Finally, I would call our family doctor, request the first possible appointment, and wait anxiously for the time to pass. Then it would happen. Invariably, the child would take a turn for the better during that period of time. The fever would break, the swelling would go down, the rash would begin to fade, the vomiting would abate. So when we arrived at the appointment I had spent two days deciding upon, the child would be on the mend and I would be left saying, "She started to get better right after I made the appointment. It always happens that way." If I were not so relieved my child was on the mend I would probably have been annoyed with her for making me look like an idiot.

That is when our doctor, who was also a friend of mine, would smile and tell me I did not have quite enough tolerance for ambiguity. That if I had been able to wait just a bit longer things would have resolved themselves. She was not reproving me, just making an observation.

Things have not changed much since those days. A few weeks after we moved to Malayasia I was mentally preparing myself to send our 16 year old to boarding school in the US since she could not apparently find a suitable ballet school here; two days later she was established in a good studio not ten minutes drive from our house. The same week I "finally" hit the bookstore in desperation, spending many tens of ringitt so that I would "at least have something to read," and the next day our shipment of books arrived.

One night in December I nearly slept on the couch because I was SO unhappy with my long-suffering husband over the uncertainty of our eldest daughter's travel plans from the US to Malaysia. We had only twelve hours left to lock in her reservations, and I could not understand or tolerate my husband's equanimity in the face of a looming crisis. He assured me that he had made the proper phone calls and the travel agent would let him know when things were settled. I would have called the corporate agent and harassed her myself had I any standing to do that, but being only the spouse I could not do anything, and my husband was not inclined to breathe down her neck. (You would suppose I would think that was a good thing. . . )

When my husband arrived at the office the next morning (we are thirteen hours ahead of the US office) he found that Emily had purchased the tickets while he slept and I fumed, and everything was taken care of. Once again, I saw the "low tolerance" light flashing on the dashboard. After the fact, the crisis suddenly shrank to tolerable size and I was left thinking, "I wish I knew then what I know now."

I wrote the first part of this post a few weeks ago. Many things which appeared ambiguous at that time are now clear - but one ambiguity is only resolved to make room for another; some are never resolved. Has a day ever dawned in which nothing is "unclear because of lack of information or because of incoherence in the available information." In fact, I think this phrase fairly well describes life; certainly it describes the future, the outlook for the new year. We lack information about almost every aspect of the new year - where the next earthquake will strike, what plots and intrigues will succeed, which wars will end and what new wars will break out, which disesases will be declared cured and what virulent new strains will emerge.

There is only one individual to whom nothing is unclear because of lack of information, and He, for His own reasons, does not always choose to lift the fog in which we find ourselves groping. He does, however, offer the antidote of faith - the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen. This is not an easy solution, nor usually a comfortable one, but it is often our only choice. We can lose sleep over the uncertainties of the present and the future, or we can learn to tolerate, and even embrace, each ambiguous, trying situation as an opportunity to exercise something far better than tolerance - faith.

Raw Confessions II

It is time again for some Raw Confessions - the Ex-pat version, not to be confused with the Malaysian version. Malaysian Raw Confessions might include items like, "I only mopped my floors five times last week." or "I left my carport gate open for an hour." Or yet, "I let a customer walk through my store without trailing him or getting close enough to trip him."

Items which would never make the Malay list are things like how many people I cut off on the highway last week, or how many parking places I stole from the person patiently waiting with her directional signal on. No one wastes any time agonizing over that kind of thing.

Now, if this were the sushi version - really raw - it might include such delicacies as why my van now has a dent on the right side. . . .but these will actually only be half-baked confessions, or as they say here, half-boiled.

So, first, I let my face show what I thought of the food at the corporate retreat, after warning my children not to turn up their noses at anything. I didn't show what I really thought, I just allowed a pained, long-suffering, "I wish there were something edible in this whole buffet" look to cross my face - more than once. I am not proud of this, but it is true.

Second, I said a word in my nine year-old's presence last week that she has never heard cross my lips. This was the third time in a week I had been the victim of circumstances in a carpark. My huge white whale of a van is too tall to fit under the barriers in any parking garage, so I have to fight minis and other toy-sized cars for a spot in the tiny outside lots. In order to get into the lot you have to take a ticket; in order to get out you have to pay at the auto-pay station which is located inside the shopping center. So, if you circle the lot 20 times without finding a parking space, you still cannot leave, because you need a paid ticket in order to make the exit gate go up, and you have to park in order to pay! The perfect catch-22!

Third, I have not taken every opportunity to meet people in my new community, something I feel guilty about at least once a day. Yesterday I walked past my neighbor trimming her rose bushes without so much as a "Selamat Pagi." I have never chatted with anyone in the exercise room and I have not stopped in the park to meet the mothers at the playground. I do smile at people, bit I'm not sure that counts.

Fourth, I fed the stray cat outside our back door for at least two weeks after my husband asked me, politely but firmly, to stop. I just could not bear her pathetic face hissing at me every time I opened the door to check on the dryer. I even tried to do it when the children were not around, since they were also under orders not to feed stray animals - thus covering my transgressions. . . Ivy blew my cover.

I think there is a pattern here. It seems that living in another culture has become an opportunity to commit all kinds of offenses I might not have fallen prey to at home! Wouldn't you know it! There is all manner of impurity in my heart just waiting for the opportunity to be revealed. Life in another culture has given me new opportunities to be self-centered, proud, impatient, rude and wilfull!

I sang Joy to the World last week in church with a new appreciation for the emphasis upon the nations, thrilled to look around and see so many non-Western faces, but I also had a fresh appreciation for the reminder of how just far the curse is found! And how well it travels!

This morning I read a Puritan prayer which ended:

The memory of my great sins, my many temptations, my falls,
bring afresh into my mind the remembrance of thy great help,
of thy support from heaven,
of the great grace that saved such a wretch as I am.
There is no treasure so wonderful as that continuous experience of thy grace
toward me which alone can subdue the risings of sin within:
Give me more of it.

That is my prayer for the upcoming New Year.

"only from himself."

This was always one of my favorite Christmas poems when I was a child. I can still recite it word for word, as can most of my siblings! Several times this year I have thought (with a smile) of the lines, "And round about December, the cards upon his shelf, which wished him lots of Christnmas cheer and fortune in the coming year, were never from his near and dear, but only from himself." One of my favorite Christmas traditions is hanging up the cards we receive in some unsophisticated manner, on a string across the kitchen or stuck with masking tape around a door frame. . . but this year I am a loss at what to do to properly showcase the ONE card we have received! Perhaps I will have it matted and framed. . . .

I thought about taking a page from King John's book and hanging up some cards I bought myself, but Malaysian Christmas cards are pretty unattractive to my discerning eye, so we're just making do with paper chains this year. Enjoy the poem.




King John's Christmas
AA Milne

King John was not a good man --
He had his little ways.
And sometimes no one spoke to him
For days and days and days.
And men who came across him,
When walking in the town,
Gave him a supercilious stare,
Or passed with noses in the air --
And bad King John stood dumbly there,
Blushing beneath his crown.

King John was not a good man,
And no good friends had he.
He stayed in every afternoon...
But no one came to tea.
And, round about December,
The cards upon his shelf
Which wished him lots of Christmas cheer,
And fortune in the coming year,
Were never from his near and dear,
But only from himself.

King John was not a good man,
Yet had his hopes and fears.
They'd given him no present now
For years and years and years.
But every year at Christmas,
While minstrels stood about,
Collecting tribute from the young
For all the songs they might have sung,
He stole away upstairs and hung
A hopeful stocking out.

King John was not a good man,
He lived his live aloof;
Alone he thought a message out
While climbing up the roof.
He wrote it down and propped it
Against the chimney stack:
"TO ALL AND SUNDRY - NEAR AND FAR -
F. Christmas in particular."
And signed it not "Johannes R."
But very humbly, "Jack."
"I want some crackers,
And I want some candy;
I think a box of chocolates
Would come in handy;
I don't mind oranges,
I do like nuts!
And I SHOULD like a pocket-knife
That really cuts.
And, oh! Father Christmas, if you love me at all,
Bring me a big, red, india-rubber ball!"

King John was not a good man --
He wrote this message out,
And gat him to this room again,
Descending by the spout.
And all that night he lay there,
A prey to hopes and fears.
"I think that's him a-coming now!"
(Anxiety bedewed his brow.)
"He'll bring one present, anyhow --
The first I had for years."
"Forget about the crackers,
And forget the candy;
I'm sure a box of chocolates
Would never come in handy;
I don't like oranges,
I don't want nuts,
And I HAVE got a pocket-knife
That almost cuts.
But, oh! Father christmas, if you love me at all,
Bring me a big, red, india-rubber ball!"

King John was not a good man,
Next morning when the sun
Rose up to tell a waiting world
That Christmas had begun,
And people seized their stockings,
And opened them with glee,
And crackers, toys and games appeared,
And lips with sticky sweets were smeared,
King John said grimly: "As I feared,
Nothing again for me!"
"I did want crackers,
And I did want candy;
I know a box of chocolates
Would come in handy;
I do love oranges,
I did want nuts!
And, oh! if Father Christmas, had loved me at all,
He would have brought a big, red, india-rubber ball!"

King John stood by the window,
And frowned to see below
The happy bands of boys and girls
All playing in the snow.
A while he stood there watching,
And envying them all ...
When through the window big and red
There hurtled by his royal head,
And bounced and fell upon the bed,
An india-rubber ball!
AND, OH, FATHER CHRISTMAS,
MY BLESSINGS ON YOU FALL
FOR BRINGING HIM
A BIG, RED,
INDIA-RUBBER
BALL!

traffic in the tropics

If I were a poet I would write about the roads in Malaysia,

Paradise of lane-changers, Graveyard of pedestrians.

I would write of ubiquitous U turns

numberless speed bumps

the lack of directional signals;

of merciless merging and lurching and inserting.

I would write of lane-sharing scooters whose drivers wear their jackets backward

of belching, barreling trucks with no cab doors

with molded plastic chairs where a driver's seat
used to be,

Of teksis that drive with equal abandon on either side of the road .

I would write of Double Parking and Double Passing

of Legendary Jams.

I would speak of interposition, interjacence, intercurrence,

intervenience, interlocation, and interjection.

I would write about interpolation, interlineation, interspersion,

intercalation, interpenetration, permeation

and infiltration.

Of intervention, interference, obtrusion, insinuation, insertion,

of intruders and interlopers in my lane.

Of drivers who come between, get between, intervene,

slide in, wedge in, edge in, jam in,

worm in, foist in, run in, plow in, work in.

How they interpose, interject, interpolate, and interline,

interleave, intersperse, and interweave;

sandwich in, fit in, squeeze in;

dovetail, splice, mortise,insinuate,

infiltrate, ingrain, interfere.

How they thrust a

nose

in;

intrude, obtrude and introduce

the thin end of the wedge.

I would muse upon

how one can only hope to survive between, betwixt, among, amidst;

in the thick of, betwixt and between,

sandwich-wise

or

parenthetically.

I would write of Forcible Ingress, of Insertion,

Implantation, Introduction and Insinuation.

Of drivers who dovetail, obtrude, thrust in, stick in,

ram in, stuff in, tuck in, press, in,

drive in, pop in, or whip in.

But since I am no poet,

but only a fan of the thesaurus,

I will not write of the roads

in Malaysia.

A Day in the Life of an Ex-Pat Wife

Madam had a hard day today. First she had to work the electric auto gate by hand, since it does not work half the time. The half of the time it does work is when the property manager comes by to fix it. Then there is no problem.

Then she had to take life and limb in hand and drive to the Giant Hypermarket to use the ATM which she knows is there. It was still rush hour, which was a new experience for Madam. When she arrived, however, she discovered that the Hypermarket, in true Malaysian style, did not open until 10:00, which was the time Sir had told her the workman who was pledged the money would arrive.

So, she headed out on the highway again to go to Bandar Utama Centrepoint, the next closest shopping center where she was sure an ATM would be located, but there was none. So, she drove back to Giant, which had unlocked its doors at least, so she could use the ATM.

Back home again, she met Mr. Satiyah, the unexpected landscaper, who had heard she wanted some landscaping done. Mr. Satiyah was large and not very patient, and spoke nearly unintelligible English. He was quite frustrated with Madam since she seemed so stupid and kept asking him to repeat things, and wanting plants in pots that he thought should go in the ground and appearing unable to understand why he wanted to put down sand before he cut the grass.

While they were talking at each other, the Pest Control man arrived in his little yellow car and asked Madam if he could inspect the house. Mr. Satiyah immediately recognized a translator and began speaking rapidly in Bahasa to the Pest Control man, who translated for Madam. Meanwhile, the property manager's assistant arrived, apparently having heard that Madam was talking to a landscaper. He kindly informed Madam that if she replaced the weeds in her yard with lovely "carpet grass" that in two years when she moves out the owner may ask her to pay to have the nice grass removed and put back the straggly groundcover that was there when she signed the rental agreement. Madam had not realized that.

Mr. Satiyah made full use of both translators present to try to convince Madam that she should do things his way, while Madam valiantly tried to convince him that she could make no permanent changes without the consent of the owner. When he could get a word in edgewise the property manager's assistant reminded Madam that the nice Pest Control man would come by every month to get rid of the ter-MITES. "The mice???" asked Madam. "No, the TER-mites', he patiently explained before Madam could tell him that her cat would do that.

Mr Satiyah left his briefcase with Madam so she could show pictures of his work to her husband, who promptly called him and told him to cancel the order Madam had placed, after hearing the amount of money she had agreed to pay.

Madam also learned today, from a native speaker, what the parking ticket on her windshield yesterday meant - it was written completely in Bahasa. She had not put money in the meter. Never mind that there was no meter in sight; apparently she should have hiked to the end of the block and made an offering to the blue box there. (All the instructions on the blue box are in Bahasa, also.)

Madam did not feel like cooking after her exciting day, so she went to Marco's Pizza, for the first time, to pick up pizza for dinner. There was nothing on the menu that did not have fungus or anchovies or beef on it, so Madam did the best she could to find something her children might eat, and headed home through the rush hour traffic. She successfully navigated the U-turns and many speed bumps and stopped at the 7 eleven to pick up coffee- flavored Pepsi and some Kickapoo Joy Juice to make up for the fungus on the pizza.

Madam will probably go to bed early tonight.





.

All I Want for Christmas

Ivy is singing Jingle Bells again in that wonderful Broadway Baby voice of hers. She has an incredible vibrato for a five year old and her voice has always been, well, Big. As a three year old she used to ask me with a puzzled face, “Why didn’t God give me a girl’s voice?” She doesn’t ask that any more, but she sings vigorously and often.

She just asked me, in all seriousness, “Should I just keep singing Jingle Bellls or should I sometimes switch to something else?”

“Well, you sing Jingle Bells really well, but it would be nice sometimes tossing in something else, too, wouldn’t it?”

“I don’t know. That’s why I asked you.”

She has a birthday coming up in two weeks and then Christmas, and she has diligently pored over the Toy R Us catalog for weeks, crayon in hand, carefully circling and and writing her name beside every item she likes. She returns to the catalog again and again and considers her choices with an expert eye. A few items have been crossed out while others have been highlighted with more black crayon circles or rays emanating from the original circle.

Last night she inititated an earnest discussion about what she really wanted for her birthday - a baby doll, a doll’s bathtub, a bottle and some doll clothes. Maybe a stroller. She has always used very adult-looking hand gestures, fingers extended and close together, first one hand, and then (“on the other hand. . ." ), the other. Her eyebrows are very active when she hits the urgent points.

The doll is important, but not the one pictured in the bathtub, “because its eyes are kind of weird, but maybe that is just because the person who drew the catalog (it is all photos) didn’t do a very good job, so if I had to have that doll it would be OK, I guess, but I really want the bathtub and a bottle to feed the doll with.” Then she worried that her presents would not be a surprise if I bought exactly what she had just asked for. But, she decided, again gesturing earnestly, that would be OK if I did not tell her which one she was getting for her birthday and which one for Christmas. “Don’t you think that would be OK?” Yes, I think it would be OK.

I also have a birthday coming up, five days before hers. I don’t look forward to mine quite as eagerly as she does, and I have neglected the pre-birthday ritual of circling items that I want and calling them to the attention of the appropriate person – I know he can’t afford a diamond this year, either! But my best gifts are either already here, or soon on the way. Six years ago Ivy was my best late birthday present and early Christmas gift – a gift to last a lifetime, as they say. I don’t remember how I celebrated my birthday that year, but I vividly remember the day my favorite gift arrived.

This year my big present will also be belated, though, I hope, by only one day. My firstborn is booked on a flight that arrives in Kuala Lumpur the morning after I turn “the new 30.” We have begun discussing how we will greet her – the best suggestion so far came from P who thinks we should all wear those black plastic glasses with the fake noses and mustaches. Just in case we don’t stand out in the crowd sufficiently already. But the details are entirely incidental. This gift, welcoming my daughter back from her first extended stay abroad, has been nineteen years in the making and, I’m sure, will be worth every minute of preparation and waiting.

So this Advent season I am enjoying the gift of an unexpected child who arrived long after I thought Anyone would give me that kind of gift, and I am waiting patiently for the homecoming of another child. I think of the carol I love, “Come Thou long-expected Jesus,” though I am really thinking of Anna, but I know that God is pleased to use our human longings and experiences to remind us of heavenly realities. During this month of reminiscense and anticipation I can remember another birth, even more remarkable and unexpected by the mother. . . I can look forward to the arrival of another Person I love and long to see, whose flight plans are not yet known.

Come, Thou long expected Jesus

Born to set Thy people free;

From our fears and sins release us,

Let us find our rest in Thee.

Israel’s Strength and Consolation,

Hope of all the earth Thou art;

Dear Desire of every nation,

Joy of every longing heart.

Born Thy people to deliver,

Born a child and yet a King,

Born to reign in us forever,

Now Thy gracious kingdom bring.

By Thine own eternal Spirit

Rule in all our hearts alone;

By Thine all sufficient merit,

Raise us to Thy glorious throne.

-Charles Wesley

i love this poet. . .

The More Loving One
- W. H. Auden


Looking up at the stars, I know quite well
That, for all they care, I can go to hell,
But on earth indifference is the least
We have to dread from man or beast.

How should we like it were stars to burn
With a passion for us we could not return?
If equal affection cannot be,
Let the more loving one be me.

Admirer as I think I am
Of stars that do not give a damn,
I cannot, now I see them, say
I missed one terribly all day.

Were all stars to disappear or die,
I should learn to look at an empty sky
And feel its total dark sublime,
Though this might take me a little time.

just along for the ride

Malaysia has a distinctive smell. I especially notice it in the morning when I first open the door to check on the laundry and the stray cat who frequents our yard, or to say goodbye to my husband as he leaves for his hour-long commute to work. It’s not a pleasant smell, but not unpleasant, either. It just is. And I imagine myself as an old woman some day catching a whiff of something and saying nostalgically, “That smells like Malaysia.” By then these two years will be a faded, fleeting memory, but today they are not, and they stretch ahead of me like a blank canvas waiting for the artist to begin his work. He has given me no hint of his plans, his style, his medium, his vision.

Our house is on a corner, on a sort of cul-de-sac, really a dead end with a wall. So to drive anywhere you have to go around three sides of the block to get to the street that leads out of our gated community. I realized this morning that you can clearly see the third corner of that progression out our back kitchen window. I glanced out idly just as my husband rounded the corner on his way to the office. I thought that if I were a newly-wed I would have discovered that window view weeks ago, and stood there to watch every morning after he left the house for one last glimpse of him, but I am not a newly-wed. I am a wife about to turn fifty after twenty-two years of kissing my husband good-bye most mornings. Sometimes he leaves for work before I am out of bed. There are some things which a global move has not changed.

It surprises me how quickly I have become used to the subtleties of the weather here. I imagined the climate as one long, unbroken stream of hot, humid air, and laughed when I heard that people distinguished between 85 and 88 degree days - I, who was accustomed to days when the temperature may vary 40 or 50 degrees between 5 AM and 2 PM - but I find my thermostat has already become more fine-tuned. I hear myself saying things like, “Oh, it’s not as hot this morning” with an element of true surprise in my voice. But I find myself still expecting the thermometer to observe a Northern schedule, albeit in a severely truncated range; I am still surprised to step outside at 11 PM and find it has grown hotter than it was at 8. Things are supposed to cool off overnight and heat up in the morning. Not so in Malaysia.

I am also learning to sweat gracefully. Well, maybe not gracefully, but a little more graciously. I come from a long line of pale complected English sorts who turn red in the face and wet all over when the humidity begins to rise. I have always hated heat for that reason and made sure anyone within earshot knew it. Now that I cannot escape it (if I'm outdoors - there is always air conditioning), I find I am beginning to make peace with the sticky dampness. I seem to spend less time fretting over the heat when there is no hope of it abating in a day or two, and I am getting better at ignoring the moisture that is dripping off my nose and down my shirt. Besides, I console myself, I could be wearing a head scarf and long sleeves like half the women in Malaysia.

I cooked my first “Indian” meal two days ago – not very good, really. It was nothing like the food at Al Awahz on the corner (I always want to call it Al Jazeerah since they always have that on the TV when we are there.) Both dishes I cooked were OK, but neither had the real bite of true Indian food, in spite of the fact that I had just filled fifteen spice jars with seeds and powders never before seen in my kitchen. I have a lot to learn.

As I write one of my daughters is downstairs picking out the melody to “Hark the Herald Angels Sing” on the piano. I am surprised every time I write the date to realize that November is drawing to a close. It feels like August – in more ways than one. Christmas seems like a long way away still – maybe two years away. I don’t even find myself nostalgic about Christmas, at least not yet, because it seems like mid-summer, and who dreams about Christmas in August? Yesterday I hung up the primitive wooden snowman inscribed with the words, “Let It Snow” next to our front door, on the wall in between the shoe cupboard (no shoes in the house), the mosaic and the heavy dark wood door. He looks good there, though I am afraid his words will not seem prophetic like they always did in New Hampshire.

One of the many things that has changed since we moved is the size of our family; not because we moved, just coincidentally at the same time, but we sit down to dinner at the table we had custom made for 12 and sort of huddle toward the middle, a small company of seven some nights, only six the nights Claire works at the restaurant. The room is huge, the sounds echo off the marble floors and bounce back from the twelve foot ceilings. We feel as small and insignificant in our own house as we do outside. We miss the days of bumping elbows around a crowded kitchen table with ourselves and our guests; we miss chatting with each other while we wait in line for the shower on Sunday mornings or the bathroom before bed. We miss complaining about how long so and so is taking. Now we can all linger in the shower and no one cares.

This morning as I showered in my huge tiled bath the words from an old Keith Green song somehow slipped into my mind, "Nothing lasts except the grace of God." And I realized that even if we had never made this move, if we had hung onto the security of our lives in small-town New Hampshire, still nothing would last, everything would still change. A and R would still have flown away to India and New Zealand,would still only come home for a brief hiatus before going to college - the prelude to going away for good. My "baby" would still learn to read and to swim and to take care of herselfvery well, thank you. Nothing lasts, but that one fact; nothing is the same yesterday, today and tomorrow but that one Person.

I've decided that the best advice I've heard this year was the last thing my pastor said to me when we left Vermont, "Enjoy the ride." Some parts are more exciting than others, some stretches fly by, some will give you whiplash, others seems to climb endlessly. Once the train starts there's no jumping off, so you might as well enjoy the ride. I'm trying to.

Thanksgiving past and present

Thou hast given so much to me,
Give one thing more, - a grateful heart;
Not thankful when it pleaseth me,
As if Thy blessings had spare days,
But such a heart whose pulse may be Thy praise.
~George Herbert

I can scarcely believe tomorrow is Thanksgiving - a day which is not associated in my mind so much with giving thanks as with family traditions, some happy and some not so pleasing. I have spent most of my 50 thanksgivings with family, though I can remember one when I was 21 that I spent at a restaurant with a date. But most have been some variation of the theme, "Over the river and through the woods."

The first Thanksgivings I can remember were spent at my grandmother's house, an urban bungalow in Massachusetts to which we repaired early Thanksgiving morning. Nanny, as we knew her, was always busy in the kitchen in a flowered apron, her iron gray hair pulled back in a severe bun, tempered with crimped waves made with an old fashioned curling iron on the sides of her temples. She was lean and energetic and opinionated. I always found her intimidating.

My mother would pitch in to help and we kids would roam around the tiny house, studying the china dogs on the knick knack shelves, watching the hours strike on the Black Forest cuckoo clock, sitting on the scratchy, maroon chenille sofa, and looking through the drawers in the small roll-top desk in my mother's old bedroom. The Macy's Thanksgiving day parade was always on the small black and white TV, but it never lasted long enough. It always seemed an eternity till dinner, and there was nothing to do but wait.

The 1930's vintage table always had the extra leaf in and filled the small dining room. It was set with Nanny's best china and with the traditional turkey and pilgrim salt and pepper shakers. The dinner plates always had a pressed glass cup in their centers full of my grandmother's homemade fruit cocktail. We dreaded that fruit cocktail. It was nothing like the syrupy sweet kind you bought in cans at the A & P; this was tart and made with grapefruit! My mother always warned us not to complain about it and to eat it all if we hoped to have the good food, so we all choked it down every year, exchanging knowing, sympathetic glances across the table, and sighed with relief when it was gone.

Then we could dig into the real food. There was turkey, of course, and mashed potatoes, gravy in a fancy gravy boat that only came out at Thanksgiving, carrots, peas, sweet potatoes, stuffing, banana bread, cranberry bread, butter, jellied cranberry sauce from a can and my grandmother's cranberry-orange relish that she made in the old-fashioned food grinder. When we had eaten all we could the table would be cleared and the real treat appeared - Nanny's steamed pudding with hard sauce. I never remember eating this any day but Thanksgiving, although it is one of the most heavenly flavors I remember from childhood. Even though it was incredibly rich and came on the heels of a huge dinner, I always felt as if I could eat it all day.

AFter dessert my mother and grandmother cleaned up and washed dishes while the rest of us watched the early dark fall and waited for the last tradition of the day. We always drove to Shoppers World, one of the first suburban shopping centers in Massachusetts, to see the animated Christmas decorations in the plate glass windows. The big, brightly lit windows were always filled with scenes from Santa's workshop where elves worked away at making toys and Santa and Mrs Santa watched approvingly. The nearly life-size elves hammered and sawed and nodded and sewed in an amazingly life-like way. We were spellbound every year. When we got too cold to watch any longer, (it was always cold on Thanksgiving), we piled in the station wagon and headed for home, sleepy and stuffed and breathlessly excited about the advent of the Christmas season which could now officially begin.

That was how I remember Thanksgiving until I was 12 years old. Always the same, with the same thrills the same expectations, the same challenges. Not completely happy, since there were always tensions between my grandmother and my father, with my mother taking her mother's part, but still comforting in its predictability, its sameness.

Sameness is what the season lacks for me this year. We are in Malaysia, only three weeks into a nearly two-year stint. We left New England just before the snow flew, and landed two days later in 80 degree weather complete with palm trees and geckos. We know no one, have no family to spend the day with, no turkey, no traditional china or serving bowls, no pumpkin for pies, no Jack Frost nipping at our noses, none of the trappings which make the day FEEL like Thanksgiving. No one else even KNOWS it is Thanksgiving, and my husband will be working all day Thursday and the next day. There are not even any Black Friday sales to avoid.

So this year we can celebrate the day with true thankfulness. All the usual trappings which distract us from the day's original purpose are missing, and all that is left is the name and the history of this day. We can perhaps feel a bit what the founders of the feast felt as they gave thanks far from home and loved ones in a strange land with strangers for guests. We can practice being thankful when it does not please us to be so, and thus capture more of the true meaning of the day than perhaps ever before. I don't think tomorrow will feel like Thanksgiving at all, but I hope it will live up to its name anyway.

Unemployed in Malaysia

Sonnet: On his blindness

When I consider how my light is spent,
Ere half my days, in this dark world and wide,
And that one talent which is death to hide,
Lodged with me useless, though my soul more bent
To serve therewith my maker, and present
My true account, lest he returning chide,
Doth God exact day-labour, light denied?
I fondly ask; but Patience to prevent
That murmur, soon replies, God doth not need
Either man's work or his own gifts, who best
Bear his mild yoke, they serve him best, his state
Is kingly. Thousands at his bidding speed
And post o'er land and ocean without rest:
They also serve who only stand and wait.

I don't have a lot in common with John Milton, would that I did, but I have always loved this sonnet. It was one of the first poems I memorized to present in Freshman Speech class at BJU. It's one of the few poems I can still quote. It came to mind this morning when I was reviewing my last two weeks. I feel as useless as Milton must have when he considered his blindness.

Moving to an utterly foreign culture has wiped out any sense of usefulness I ever felt. At least I can speak the language here (or, rather, they speak my language), so I guess it could be worse, but I hate the feeling of living in a place where taking care of myself (and my family.. . ) is a full-time job. I hate the fact that the small talents I have are "lodged with me useless." I feel as if I am not only shirking reaponsibilites "at home" in my land of origin (taking care of ill relatives, helping friends in various extremities), but I am not contributing anything here.

I feel a bit like Will in About A Boy - my day is spent doing things like calling a taxi, waiting for a taxi, telling the taxi driver "No, I don't know how to get there; that's why I called you." Shopping for groceries, and realizing at the checkout that I don't have much in my full cart that I can actually cook or anyone can actually eat. . . at least there is peanut butter here. Walking to the exercise room, waiting for the treadmill, sweating gallons on the treadmill, walking home, taking a shower. Then it's time to call another taxi to run a different errand. . . . and finally going out to eat because I have no dishware to cook with yet and my oven has not been delivered.

I guess there is an element of pride in my discontent. I like to think of myself as a worthwhile person, a worker not a Queen Bee, a producer not a consumer. I am having a hard time becoming a student, not a teacher. I don't like feeling like a child, like a less than competent grown up! There is probably a lesson in humility I need to learn, a lesson in my own dispensability, a lesson in waiting to be shown the next step. This is not what I expected to find in Malaysia, but it appears to be my first lesson: They also serve who only stand and wait.

toto, we're not in kansas anymore

It's 10:30 PM in Petaling Jaya. We all fell asleep aboaut 4 PM. Kevin and I just woke up; we have turned off the kids' room lights; I wish they would all sleep till morning, but that seems nearly impossible.

There's a loud, metallic band playing ourside our hotel - somewhere in the strange theme park which seems oddly unthemed; I can see a Native American chief on a mountaintop, a volcano, a castle, a dozen life-sized carved elephants from my balcony. On the other side of the entrance (through a shopping mall complete with an ice-skating rink) is a three story tall sphinx-like creature with a lion's head. Welcome to Malaysia.

The internet connection in our room hasn't been working; the toilet would have overflowed just now if I had not pulled off the tank lid and stopped it. We've discovered that the "everything" store in the mall does not carry any non-prescription pain killers or decongestants, though you can buy something called "Essence of Chicken" and various Indian-looking potions which give no indication of what they are meant to treat. I guess you just know that if you live anywhere they are sold.

M just woke up. She took her Tin Tin book out on the balcony where she is sipping coconut milk through a straw from a whole coconut. The sound of the man-made waterfall in the water park can be heard when the band takes a break. The really long hanging walkway stretching from one side of the park to the other (think of the Emperor's New Groove. . . ) is strung with lights.

Our five year old saw her first burkha today. The sight is always made doubly strange by the fact that the men accompanying these shrouded figures are so often wearing shorts and t-shirts. It feels so different than encountering an Amish couple, for example, who are at least a matched set. These pairs always have a whiff of domination and servility about them.

Ivy also tried guava, mango and watermelon juice today. She's remembering to point with her thumb, not forefinger, and is taking most most things in stride. She's a pro on a plane by now - reminding us about the seat belt lights and tray tables if we miss the cues. She knows when to pull out her passort and boarding pass and grabs her own bin for her shoes and bag at security checkpoints.

She's trying to figure out the difference between "staring" and "looking," which is not an easy distinction for me to explain. At a Thai restaurant at lunch today she was interested in the women in traditional costumewho kept hovering around our table, but also noticed the large fish tank in the center of the room. When I asked her if she wanted to go look at the fish she declined, but correctly noted that, "The fish wouldn't mind if I stared at them."

All in all, the trip was amazingly smooth. We only lost one bag out of 14, the one with my clothes and toiletries, of course, and made all our connections easily. The 16 hour flight was a breeze- between sleeping and eating non-stop, and watcing videos on their personal screens, no one was even bored. I manged to finish a novel I've been working on for weeks - reading, not writing. We have, by the grace of God, gotten along pretty well, too, with only a few minor squabbles despite frayed nerves and bloodshot eyes.

One ongoing disagreement is over the ontoloogy of "home." We find we are all constantly defining and redefining the word "home" in our conversations, which is not, I guess, unlike what happens on an extended vacation; but we keep reminding each other that we are NOT on vacation. The casual phrase, "when we get home. . . . " has acquired an ambiguous context. The speaker is required to to clarify whether he means, "back to the hotel room," "moved into our new house," (though I don't think anyone has actually used the phrase that way yet), or, "back to New Hampshire." P is the strict constructionist among us; "home" has one and only one meaning for him. He even took us to task in the restaurant today for telling the server we'd like to take some of the leftovers "home with us." They would no longer be worth eating if we did that, he pointed out.

So here I sit in a lovely hotel room on the far side of the world, away from almost everything and everyone I hold dear. I freely confess that I don't know why I'm here, though I am holding onto the memory of that morning in June when I felt as if God had punched me in the solar plexus (that's really how I felt; I don't know why), and the decision to move here became a matter of simple obedience, no longer a choice that was up to me to make.

I dread moving into our beautiful, sterile new house. I dread the morning just 4 days away when K drives off to work and leaves the rest of us in a huge, empty house with nothing on the schedule, no friends to call, nowhere to go - a van in the car park but no one to drive it, bereft of our familiar comfort objects, bereft of the novelty of just having arrived.

Then I remember that I have often longed for the experience I have had in the past of having to cling desperately to God and to my feeble faith in Him when there was nothing else to sink my fingernails into. In recent years my soul has grown fat and comfortable (alright, not just my soul!). My church and friends have been a safety net, my children have been happy with their lives, our parents have been in relatively good health. I have had my little niches and my familiar haunts so I have not really needed to hang onto God for all I was worth. But I sense that is no longer the case.

And I wonder if that's really why I'm here - if it's not for some "ministry" I fancy I might have in someone else's life, but if might be primarily for me, to save me from my self-centered, self-satisfied, self-sufficient, self-serving life. If that's God's purpose, in part or in the whole, He is off to a great start.

When she got there, the cupboard was bare

Books are not made for furniture, but there is nothing else that so beautifully furnishes a house.
-Henry Ward Beecher

I feel like Mother Hubbard and the cupboard is bare. My books are all packed away; about 70 boxes have gone to storage, another dozen are sealed up and marked with purple duct tape, part of our shipment to Malaysia. They are not all MY books, of course, but I probably know them best, and surely love them most.

I have been surprised at how many times in the last week something has triggered a thought and I have headed for an empty bookshelf - the particular one where the poetry book I want always stands, only to realize it is not there. A lot of the poetry I could find on the web, of course, but it's just not the same. First, I would have to stand in line behind three teenagers for computer time, and then, even when I found the poem I couldn't take it up to bed with a cup of coffee and read it as I snuggle under the aptly named comforter. I couldn't flip a few pages to that other poem I love, and close the book when my eyelids begin to close of their own accord.

I miss knowing where I can find almost any volume - I, who cannot find a pen or a hairbrush when I need one - confident that the passage I want to reread will be easy to find because the pages have been deliberately dog-eared. I miss sorting through the stack of books on my bedside table, deciding which of the five books I am currently reading will fit my mood tonight. I miss trying to figure out where I left off because I fell asleep before I finshed the chapter last time.

And I wonder if electronic media will indeed replace books, if the convenience of holding an entire library of books in the palm of your hand will take the place of the old paper and cardboard objects people have been clutching for the last 400 years or so. I wonder if the book as a physical object will go the way of the phonograph and whether people will be satisfied with disembodied ideas. In some ways that is an appealing idea; I mean, the important thing, the "real" thing about a book is the ideas it creates in one's mind, not the heft of the recycled wood product on which it is printed. But I, at least, feel wedded to the physical object as well.

I remember carefully placing the frightening books I read as a child (and even a teenager, I confess) outside my bedroom door at night and closing the door shut against the fearful object. There were some books I could not have in the room after the lights went out! I have several Bibles from different periods in my life, and sometimes I need a particular one to read when I am looking for comfort. Of course I know that the real comfort comes from the words of God recorded there, not the book itself as some sort of talisman or charm. . . but still, I have so much history with the book, with the page, with tearstains that wrinkle the paper in certain places. . . My husband has shared our bed with books over the years, ones I fall asleep reading and drop somewhere in the blankets. I have grown accustomed to the thunk of a book falling off the bed in the middle of the night when someone stretches in their sleep, and I like the sound.

So, this separation from my comfort objects may be just the thing I need to wean me from their physical presence; I may find the web is faster and easier to search, that anything I really need can be downloaded and carried effortlessly in my purse, that it's freeing not to have to worry about the book I left out on the blanket in the yard under my favorite tree when the rain starts. But I doubt it.

fashion dilemma

Ivy was trying to decide whether to wear a sequined cape from an older sister's ballet perfomance to her ballet class. She kept eyeing it, wondering outloud if the other girls would laugh at her if she wore it. She was obviously capitivated by it, however, and could not take it off. Finally she decided it was just too much. "I would be a glittering disaster!" she pronounced, and left the cape at home.

the uses of suffering

We had two dear little girls live with us for half the year. Their Mom is in prison; their dad is in and out of correctional facilities. We would pray for their parents every night, and we would also pray for my brother, Uncle P, who is incarcerated. It made their own heartache a little more bearable, a little less unmentionable to know that I had a loved one in prison, too.

I saw the girls this weekend. They are living with a lovely foster family who hope to give them a permanent home. My other brother happened to be visiting for the weekend, and came along with me to visit with the girls. After they both leapt in my arms and whispered a few secrets in my ear they wanted to know "who that guy is." I told them he was my brother, Uncle D. J was puzzled, "How did he get here?' she asked. I said he drove to my house for the weekend. Then she challenged me, "How did he get out of jail?" I realized her mistake, told her this was my other brother, and we laughed together about her mistake.

And then I had a curiously warm feeling that took me a moment to decipher. I was happy to share that misfortune with these little ones. Was I glad, I asked myself, that my brother was in prison? Of course not. But I was very glad I could understand some of their own sadness because I had the same grief. And that felt like a small revelation. The phrase from Hebrews 4 immediately came to mind in the King James Version I grew up with and love so well:
For we have not a high priest which cannot be touched with the feeling of our infirmities. I realized I was touched with the feeling of their infirmities, and it was a sweet fellowship.

I found myself pondering what other infirmities I have been touched with that have become a bridge between me and another hurting soul, and I thought of a young woman I know who has a painful relationship with her mother through no fault of her own. The mother has some hard issues of her own which this particular daughter brings to mind. My own mother's issues are completely different, but she has rejected me because of demons that plagued her before I ever existed. I just became the lightning rod that attracted their fury. So, I can sympathize with my young friend, and understand the particular hurt and frustration she feels. I am one who can be touched with the feeling of her infirmities. And that is good.

I remember distinctly the first time I felt I understood the passage in I Corinthians 1 which reminds us that it is "the God of all comfort Who comforteth us in all our tribulation, that we may be able to comfort them which are in any trouble, by the comfort wherewith we ourselves are comforted of God." It gave me a ray of hope in a hard, painful place to realize that NOW I could comfort someone else hurting as badly as I was.

I have never, however, understood the clause in verse 6, "but if we are afflicted it is for your comfort." In what strange (or even sick) way could one person's affliction be the comfort of another? But today I marveled at the wisdom of God who works all things together, and was amazed to think that in the midst of hurts I suffered 30 or 40 years ago, God had my young friend in mind; He knew our paths would cross and she would need the comfort I could give her. How inscrutable are God's ways; how infinite his wisdom. How skillful and deft his weaving.

We all know the platitude, "Misery loves company," but I don't think that really applies to what the little girls and I share. I think Paul's phrase, "the fellowship of . . . sufferings" is far more lovely and apt. It describes the heart-bond that grows from a shared experience, and points us to the sweetness that can be gleaned even from heartache. It reminds us that nearly all experience can be redeemed in one way or another, and that there is indeed comfort in knowing we are not alone. Someone else has been touched with the feeling of our infirmities, and that makes all the difference.

Psalm 103

Bless the Lord, O my soul,

and all that is within me, bless his holy name!

Bless the Lord, O my soul,

and forget not all his benefits,

who forgives all your iniquity,

who heals all your diseases

who redeems your life from the pit,

who crowns you with steadfast love and mercy,

who satisfies you with good so that your youth is renewed like the eagle's.
The Lord works righteousness and justice for all who are oppressed.

He made known his ways to Moses,

his acts to the people of Israel.

The Lord is merciful and gracious,

slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love.

He will not always chide, nor will he keep his anger forever.

He does not deal with us according to our sins,

nor repay us according to our iniquities.

For as high as the heavens are above the earth,

so great is his steadfast love toward those who fear him;

as far as the east is from the west,

so far does he remove our transgressions from us.

As a father shows compassion to his children,

so the Lord shows compassion to those who fear him.

For he knows our frame; he remembers that we are dust.
As for man, his days are like grass;

he flourishes like a flower of the field;

for the wind passes over it, and it is gone,

and its place knows it no more.

But the steadfast love of the Lord is from everlasting to everlasting on those who fear him,

and his righteousness to children's children,

to those who keep his covenant

and remember to do his commandments.

The Lord has established his throne in the heavens,

and his kingdom rules over all.

caught in the middle

I have always preferred "both/and" to either/or." I have ever and always been fascinated by paradox, by oxymoronica. Contradictions in terms have always intrigued me. I wrote my Masters' thesis on one of the central paradoxes of the church, her existence as an entity "in the world, but not of it." So, I am not really all that uncomfortable finding myself neither here nor there, betwixt and between, saying hello and goodbye in the same breath.

In more than one area of my life I feel like the gentleman in the naughty British humor skit. Named Mr. Bottocks, he was chided for being "neither one nor the other."As a middle-aged mother of a kindergartener and two young adults I often feel uncertain about what universe I belong to. I show up at the doctor's office for some very middle-aged health concerns wearing shiny stickers on my shirt which my 5 year-old carefully affixed. I sit beside the young Mums at beginners ballet; they are watching their first ballerinas while I am cherishing my last. They chat about diapers and feedings; I mentally tick off the items left to do before my eldest boards a plane for India. I talk with the college admissions rep on the phone and stumble over the difficult question, "Is your son a junior or a senior?" She laughs indulgently and makes some comment about how quickly passes; I pour Trix into a red plastic bowl.

But my children are not the only part of my life that keeps me feeling as if I am living in limbo. I am a physical resident of New Hampshire, but mentally I am in Malaysia much of the time. I am surrounded by cues that say winter is coming, but I am preparing for a long, long summer. My eyes are beginning to glaze over when people talk about upcoming events if they are more than three weeks in the future. I feel as I did when I first got bifocals (did I admit that?) - I have to figure out which lens to look through to properly focus.

But I think this is all good practice. It is a good reminder that we are all aliens and strangers here - denizens of earth but citizens of heaven. We all live day-to-day in one place while looking forward eagerly to another. We must cook meals, keep appointments, pay bills and repair cars, all the while knowing none of this will last; it will all be subsumed one day by a greater reality. We have to daily, hourly adjust our focus from close to distant in order to rightly number our days and present to God a heart of wisdom. We need to remember the admonition of the old hymn to "Turn your eyes upon Jesus; look full in His wonderful face; and the things of earth will grow strangely dim in the light of His glory and grace. "