SING IT, BROTHA

Tonight I've been back and forth between my Bible and my Human Rights textbook—plenty of truth and sin and good and bad stuff to question and discuss and all that jazz—and I started this whole post on it, which ended up being pretty crappy and inadequate overall. So instead of frittering away hours typing and deleting tired words, I'm just gonna let Ray LaMontagne take over. He sings it better than I can say it anyway.

"How Come"

People on the street now

Faces long and grim

Souls are feeling heavy

And faith is growing thin

Fears are getting stronger

You can Feel them on the rise

Hopelessness got some by the throat you can see it in their eyes

I said how come

How come

Everybody on a shoestring

Everybody in a hole

Everybody in an old jet plane

Crossing their fingers and toes

Government man spin his politics till he got you pinned

Everybody trying to reach out to each other

But they don't know where to begin

I said how come

I can't tell

the free world

from living hell

I said how come

How come

all I see

is a child of god

in misery

I said how come

The pistol now as profit

The bullet some kind of lord and king

But pain is the only promise that this so called savior is gonna bring

Love can be a liar

And justice can be a thief

And freedom can be an empty cup from which everybody want to drink

I said how come

I can't tell

the free world

from living hell

I said how come

How come

all i see

is a child of god

in misery

I said how come

It's just man killing man

Killing man

Killing man

Killing man

Killing man

I don't understand

...

BUT WAIT

Hey friends.

I'm reading some good stuff lately and thought I'd share a few stray thoughts while I'm by my computer.

Usually, I'm pretty good with uncertainty. It's okay with me. When people ask me about post-grad plans, it doesn't freak me out—even though I don't have any sort of packaged answer, I'm mainly just excited about all the possibilities. God desires to do his work in and through me (crazy, right?), and that's what keeps me rooted in peace.

This has been a blessing. But more and more, I realize that this trust and peace only lands on particular things in my life, and there are plenty of other areas of uncertainty that are simply terrifying. I don't think I realized that until this week—until I found myself overly wrapped up in anxiety, picking up Oswald Chambers' My Utmost for His Highest for some wisdom and just for good reading. Two things I read that struck me:

...what an impertinence worry is! Let the attitude of life be a continual "going out" in dependence upon God, and your life will have an ineffable charm about it which is satisfaction to Jesus. You have to learn to go out of convictions, out of creeds, out of experiences, until so far as your faith is concerned, there is nothing between yourself and God.

--and--

When God brings the blank space, see that you do not fill it in, but wait....Wait for God's time to bring it round and He will do it without any heartbreak or disappointment. When it is a question of the providential will of God, wait for God to move.

Sigh. I suck at waiting.

Sure, I am eager for what God wants to do—but I am also eager for the things I want, now...and I'm pretty good at filling in blank spaces while I pretend to wait. What an impertinence I am to myself! What a way we humans have of breaking our own hearts.

"Going out" in dependence on God without my makeshift crutches feels a bit like perching on a thin tree branch that does not look at all as if it will support my weight. But, while the branch and my stomach waver, there's a definite thrill to it, right? And beneath the thrill, a truth that I am supported by the one who wholly knows who I am and why I am.

Hmm. Nothing between myself and God. I'm working on that.

TRAIN-RESONANCE

They say if you put your ear to a train track, you'll feel it's train-resonance long before steel hits steel in front of you.

Since I woke up this morning, my ear has been bent to the train track, and I feel a resonance--a surety far off, the quickening clack that keeps my shoulders in tension and my eyes scanning my surroundings for a change.

I can't speak what it is yet--all I have is the resonance. But intuitively, I know it's not nervousness or dread or anything to fear at all. It's a good alertness.

I think God wants to say something today. This Monday is wholly Novembery-Michigan--all sad wet spots and a hung-over grey--but today I distinctly feel God moving underneath it too, among us. I shiver at the spiritual-tremor I feel...and wait, listening.

A MOST DANGEROUS NON-RESPONSE

And now, a word from someone else:

In a way, to be indifferent to that suffering is what makes the human being inhuman. Indifference, after all, is more dangerous than anger and hatred. Anger can at times be creative. One writes a great poem, a great symphony. One does something special for the sake of humanity because one is angry at the injustice that one witnesses. But indifference is never creative. Even hatred at times may elicit a response. You fight it. You denounce it. You disarm it.

Indifference elicits no response. Indifference is not a response. Indifference is not a beginning; it is an end. And, therefore, indifference is always the friend of the enemy, for it benefits the aggressor—never his victim, whose pain is magnified when he or she feels forgotten. The political prisoner in his cell, the hungry children, the homeless refugees—not to respond to their plight, not to relieve their solitude by offering them a spark of hope is to exile them from human memory. And in denying their humanity, we betray our own.

Indifference, then, is not only a sin, it is a punishment.

-Elie Wiesel, "The Perils of Indifference"

Just something I'm thinking about today while preparing for my poli sci class tomorrow. I hope you take some time to think about this too. Check out Elie Wiesel's entire speech at this link (really, do it):

http://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/ewieselperilsofindifference.html

Thanks for stopping by.

ARTSY

I love art.

I love what it does to paint and recycled materials; I love what it does to people's minds; I love what it does to the spaces in and around it. I just love it.

Last night I headed downtown with a few friends to check out Art Prize, this worldwide art expo-competition-extravaganza that Grand Rapids has been hosting since September 23rd. It's a huge, eclectic mix of styles and materials and abstraction and play—a true visual adventure.

We didn't make it to nearly all the venues, but we did see some sweet stuff: a giant moose made entirely of nails, portraits made of salt and red earth, a giant sea anemone (or something) made of circus balloons, a pink-frosted room. It didn't really matter if I totally jived with what the artist was trying to do or say (if anything)—it was just delightful to see what people can do with what they have.

In fact, one artist's statement—I can't remember the name—wrote that all you really need to create is all you have right now.

Huh.

Thank you, unnamed artist. I had forgotten.

There always seems to be an extra something—another diploma, a roomier house, a bit more direction, a someone—that we can wait around for before we feel like we're ready and able to get out in the world and do something meaningful.

God invites us to be co-creators now, wherever we are, with whatever we have. Maybe if I relinquish my control over what I have and what I need, God will have room to surprise me with what he can do. Because I've got this crazy idea that God can take my most feeble, disjointed efforts and turn them into something gracious if I just let him. (It's not really about me anyway.)

All I have right now is all I really need.

Okay.

GET ANGRY

So the Yugoslav wars were pretty horrific, and when the Calvin group was in Croatia last fall, we still saw the wretched effects of it all over the countryside and especially in the pits of our stomach. (See a former post called "Vukovar" if you need to recall some of that.)

Why am I talking about this now? I just had an aha! moment as I was skimming over my human rights textbook; one human right specified by international law is this: "Physical destruction includes the destruction of crops by chemical defoliants or the pollution of water reservoirs. Violations would also occur if landmines were to render agricultural areas useless...(yada yada yada)..." This is considered a war crime.

But if you drive through the Croatian countryside, through its ethnically segregated Hungarian, Serbian, Bosnian, and Croatian villages, you will notice this exact crime arrogantly branded on all the fields—all except the Croatian fields.

The Croatian government has thus far failed to remove these red, skeleton-stamped minefield signs from much of the land that could be used for cultivation, for feeding people, for giving poor rural communities the freedom to profit, flourish, work, and be free from hunger. It's not that there are necessarily leftover landmines from the Yugoslav wars in the field; in fact, most fields have been swept of them. But leaving that red sign there mandates that the field can't be cultivated, and so the Croatian government continues to exact vengeance on minorities—Bosnians, Serbs, and Hungarians—isolating them in an island of poverty and fruitlessness.

Oh, that makes me so mad. I hope you are getting seriously angry about this. Otherwise, in ten years, our indifference will ensure the continuation of this and all other human rights violations.

STRAY THOUGHT OVER TEA

A thought:

There is something very soothing about a kitchen.

There are a bunch of tangents I could easily run off with about how food and sharing food and sitting down for regular family meals and friendly potlucks creates community...and how important communion and sharing communion is...and all that jazz; but really, I just wanted to say that thing about kitchens.

I just glanced up from my reading, and my good friend and housemate Liz Yeager is stirring some homemade chai tea over our stove top, and there's something about her, there, stirring her tea, and me, here at the table, with my book, and the space between us and the comfortable silence except for the quiet stirring.

That's all.

FACT

Today is my last first day of school.

"GUT" IS A FUNNY WORD

Whoever claims to live in him must walk as Jesus did.

(I John 2:6)

Usually when my belly is rumbling, it's saying, Leah, I want some peanut butter, please. (It's a very polite belly.) And this morning, when my belly said, Good morning, Leah, I would love some coffee with peanut butter toast, I listened.

But around 11:20 this morning, during the worship service at Madison, my gut was just churning with a hunger that had nothing to with peanut butter or physical need. It had everything to do with the truth I started this post off with: Whoever claims to live in him must walk as Jesus did.

Sometimes seeking God's will is a test-and-wait-and-see-and-turn-around-and-try-again thing, which you do while slogging through a thick fog. And then sometimes God just hits you with a truth—maybe because you were ready for it, maybe because you made your heart available for it, or maybe because he just wanted you to listen up right then and there.

Whoever claims to live in him must walk as Jesus did.

This morning was one of those clear-cut truth mornings for me. And by clear-cut truth, I mean it landed like a fireball in my belly, a meteor shower maybe, and worked its way into something straight-up practical while Pastor Dave preached.

It was awesome.

I've got all these crazy dreams about bringing fingerpaint to kids in the Ukraine, and helping the Roma women provide for themselves and their families, and waging a war of love against all kinds of apathy and discrimination and hate going on around world. The cool thing is, it's possible.

When I die to myself, just let fistfuls of selfish and insecure and stupid stuff go, just let God really have his say and way with whatever I've got, these dreams get real. All of a sudden, they're not far away somethings, but up-close, highly-focused callings. They're empowered by the only one who's got the power to ignite those dreams into a big blazing reality. They're things I feel burning in my gut each day I wake up. And as long as I'm still waking up (praise God), I will burn for that which God requires of and desires for me.

Whoever claims.

I claim the just mercy of Christ, I will proclaim his death until he comes, and I must walk in the way of life.

Mmhmm.

CICADA

Listen to your life. See it for the fathomless mystery that it is. In the boredom and pain of it no less than in the excitement and gladness: touch, taste, smell your way to the holy and hidden heart of it because in the last analysis all moments are key moments, and life itself is grace. --Frederick Buechner

I saw a cicada this week.

It was on the walk to work—during that routine, one-foot-after-another, six-minute plod from car to office. Most mornings are similarly unremarkable. This morning was not.

I've heard plenty of cicadas. I've heard their incessant august croaking, their late-night lament of the thick humidity, venting with every other living creature that's hoping for fall and the promise of something cooler.

I've heard them.

But this one morning I saw a flimsy, flittery green one, piggyback on the crackly mud-brown shell it had just clambered out of.

It's eyes were dewy and the wings a thin film, like blowing bubbles through a plastic wand. It was like listening in on a very tiny, very important secret.

It may have been the happiest thing that happened all week.

It was just a wisp of a moment, but it was enough to delight me with something I think I knew but forget most of the time: that the world is so very big, that the tiny things are so very important, that I am one creature among many, and that all those creatures are necessary and right and mysterious and beautiful and surprising and ought to be noticed and considered and delighted in because they exist.

Walk slow and listen well. Such fragile moments are easy to miss.

I hope that you know the incessant, fathomless mystery of life even as you plod along, one foot after the other. I hope that you dig down into the holy, hidden heart of it and that you are scandalously surprised at the grace you find there.

TRUTH IS A HARD APPLE TO CATCH

Eh, I did not realize the weeks slipped by so quickly. Forgive me for forgetting to nurture the blog.

I'm enjoying my friend Anne Lamott again this week (by friend, I mean I respect her honest wit and wish I could write more like her). As we were sharing thoughts over chamomile tea one evening, Anne said this to me: 

Leah, "Truth is a hard apple to catch and it is a hard apple to throw."

She's talking about drafts, of course, of letting other trusted friends and writers look at your finished drafts, size them up, and give you an honest critique—to tell you what works, what doesn't, what's too much, what you should take out or elaborate, how you can be better. It doesn't do you much good as a writer to consult a bunch of people who are too afraid of hurting your feelings to tell you the truth—they'll ignore a draft's flaws just to pat you on the back.

Anne said that, sure, those people are nice—they mean well—but they won't make you a better writer. Meanwhile, you and your drafts sit idle and stuck, not risking enough to be better, knowing all the while that what you've churned out thus far is crap.

Your real, tough-it-out-together friends will acknowledge all the ugly; they will challenge you, demand that you be better, and walk beside you as you go through the awful process of crossing out, elimnating, restructuring, renewing, recreating...but they'll also hmm, and ah, and squeeze your shoulder at particular word choices or structural decisions—and these words are much meatier and more encouraging and worth it because you know then that it is true, that there is something good there.

...By the way, are we still talking about writing drafts? 

 

I have the great blessing of having a handful of honest friends. I can catch a hard apple from them, because I know they throw it in love, wincing if it smacks me in the gut when I'm not looking for it, helping me up again. (I'm focusing on the catching part, because I don't usually have trouble throwing it—though I think I'm also getting to be a much more mindful and compassionate thrower of hard apples.)

These hard apple-throwers ask me the meaty questions other people are sometimes afraid to ask; they acknowledge my ugly when I'm sitting in the corner, nurturing a draft of my life, idle, stagnant, trying to convince myself that where I'm at is pretty okay, good enough. They also reaffirm good things, encouraging me to zealously pursue those miniscule bits which are right and true and pure and lovely.

Thanks, trusted apple-throwers. Keep throwing them my way—I need you. (So do my crappy first drafts.)

BE NEWSY

Ran across some interesting articles in the BBC NEWS this morning.

I'm learning a ton about the roots of ethnic strife in China and all that's blazing hot and ugly in the streets these days; but that got me thinking about other instances of ethnic strife, and that got me searching for news from my adopted homelands--Hungary, Ukraine, Croatia, Romania, Bosnia, Serbia...Eastern Europe in general.

So I found this article on the Roma. Check it out at this link:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/8136812.stm

It gives an interesting snapshot on their ethnic and cultural history and does a graphic job of speaking to the kind of heavy-handed hate they've been trampled with through various European eras.

For centuries, the Roma people's nomadism has marked them as shifty, deceitful, lazy, suspicious, other. In fact, in the throw-down with the Turks in the Ottoman wars, other Europeans often branded them as Turkish spies. This sparked the first widespread Roma genocide in Europe in which the Roma people were viciously hunted, humiliated, and butchered. (The article mentions everything from head-shaving to ear-slicing to forced sterilization.)

It's a sordid history, one that doesn't get a lot of face time in high school and college history classes.

It's also a sordid reality that's just beginning to get face time in world news reports and political summits.

You should really read the whole article--it's a fast read, and I promise you'll learn something. (I did.)

Join me in perusing the worlds news for a bit--there are so many human stories we need to start investing in (our time, money, service, prayer, whatever). But it all starts with tuning in, listening to the story, and sharing it with your neighbors.

Thanks for reading.

Come back again soon.

FADED LEVIS AND TAILORED BLAZERS

I'm working in downtown Grand Rapids this summer, on South Division Avenue. The area is still developing, and I always find it an ironic juxtaposition to walk down Weston and see the fixed up facade and foundation of Rockwell's (a local bar and grille) smushed up right next to this torn up, forsaken, sagging space next door. The building is actually leaning and crumbling, as if a good kick in the bottom right corner would send it tumbling right down into dust.

Dust.

Each morning, I pass a few stony churches, a cheap motel, the friendly lime-vested security guard by the hospital, and a couple of ministries for the homeless and unemployed in Grand Rapids. I nod to the man slinking along in faded, tapered Levis and an 80s-style track jacket, plastic bag slung over one elbow.

Sometimes he nods. Usually he just walks on.

There's a couple of dudes and that one lady who hang out on the cement steps in front of the motel, smoking cigarettes early before the heat hits and their street gets busier.

I like mornings.

They feel right.

I also like my job. I work for an independent consultant who specializes in diversity, inclusion, and cultural competency--basically, he's working for social justice in the corporate sphere, and I get to write for him. I'm thankful for the job, and I'm learning a lot (more on that another day).

But some days, I head into the office to write for a bunch of our clients who are sealing and dealing, swapping and gambling on millions of bucks in corporate America and I wonder what the heck I'm doing. Because, despite the relevant and purposeful work that I think we're doing, that I think corporate America needs, it's just a world that doesn't jive with me.

Some days I can hardly stand it.

Some days I just want to scream--It doesn't matter!! Dust to dust, man! Your money, my pride, all of our foolishness--dust! The money makes me sick some days--it's just a bunch of arbitrary numbers and dirty coins and crumpled papers that we toss around, that we use to make some people powerful and some people powerless.

Not that money can't be used well. But most of the time it just seems like a gluttonous mess.

It just that my mornings make such an uncomfortable juxtaposition between the scraping by and the smooth sailing, by some people scrambling after coins in the street while others are bathing in riches, by some people people sporting goodwill track jackets and plastic bags and others tailored blazers and BlackBerrys.

It bugs me.

But I'm glad it does, because I'd be much more worried about my future if I didn't feel sick sometimes at that kind of weighty imbalance.

Instead, I've got an itch for a world that isn't so sadly comical. In that world, maybe the corporate gurus walk out of their offices someday and go take the dudes and that one lady on the street for lunch. In that world, these people might just start to care about each other. In that world, we might see the super-privileged begin to heave some of the heaviness off the underprivileged and the scale might just shift a bit closer to even. A bit.

It's my job to help make that world a reality.

FINGER-PAINT IS SUCH STUFF AS DREAMS ARE MADE ON

I’ve been toying around with some dreams in between daily life stuff.

Bear with me as I sketch some of it out...and thanks in advance for sticking with me through this post--I promise it's important.

I promise this blog won't be all about Hungarian adventures, but, the fact is, those adventures excavated some serious life goals that I didn't even know were simmering way down deep. Soul-stuff. Sticky-stuff. The kind of stuff I can't let go...stuff God won’t let me let go.

Every day since November, I think about this little Ukrainian girl named Japuca. Here’s how it started:

We rattled up to this sketchy, communist-bloc-type children's hospital and wound our way up through stale and sickly smells to the abandoned children's wing. There were ten or eleven cribs in the three rooms we were in--none bigger than a small bathroom--and the kids were pretty much Roma kids. Gypsy kids. Dark hair, if they had any, deep dark eyes, and too many scars.

Yeah, the Roma people have scars.

See, the Roma sort of get shoved to the reeking outskirts of every city and country, glean what tin or wood or leftover stuff they can, then slap together their own ghettos out of everybody’s way. There’s this huge racial stigma that goes back about a thousand years, back to when they were known for being nomads and musicians and whatnot. People take one glance at their swarthier skin and spit out all kinds of hatred. It’s sick. I won't go into a bunch of detail today about all the institutional racism in Europe against the Roma--legislation, education, healthcare--just know that they don’t belong anywhere. So they scrape by together, anywhere they can.

So they’ve got, like, zero resources and a bunch of kids; so if you're a mom, what do you do? You think, "Hey, if I drop my kid off at this hospital for a while, she might get at least one meal a day, which is something I can't give her." (There are a lot of other reasons for abandonment too, but this is a huge one.)

So the kids just kind of show up there.

The children’s hospital is understaffed and under-resourced too, so there are barely enough nurses to change diapers and get everyone fed each day--which means each kid probably gets less than five minutes a day with another human being, unless you count the moaning or cooing or spitting up of the other babies in the room.

So we students just decided to love on them for a while.

I like kids, but I’m actually not that great with babies; while some people’s motherly instinct goes into full roar in a roomful of babies, that’s not me. But this was different, because Japuca was important to me right away.

They told us not to pick her up because recently she'd been hustled out of the hospital, horribly beaten up by her dad, then deposited at the hospital again. She had a lot of bruising and a bunch of scabs all over, especially on her head. But with all the other babies being toted around, you could tell she just had to be picked up too. So the nurses nodded an okay and pretty soon I was holding this baby girl in these pilly maroon fleece pants and a pilly pink sweatshirt.

She was beautiful.

Her eyes were like dark copper, and she was mostly bald. She didn't talk, just beamed at me as wide as her little mouth would stretch while we all talked and cuddled and sang kid-Jesus-songs and rapped to Flo-Rida. (It was a good mix, okay?)

Her legs were really bowed and stiff, more like stilts than baby-legs, so I was worried about trying to help her walk. But Jordan helped us, and we cheered as she sort of slid around in forward motion, both of us hanging on tight and supporting her body. She was so excited.

Japuca was about the size of a 10-month-old, maybe a year, I don't know. But her face looked older, so I checked the date on her crib: 7/7/05.

Japuca was three.

See, in the first five years of our lives, babies get cuddled and cooed at and passed around church fellowship halls until their moms are sure they caught some horrific virus; and eventually they start to toddle around and mumble baby-things; and then they get into learning games and puzzles and Memory; and even when their parents want to blow their brains out after playing Candy Land for the umpteenth time in a day, they are learning. Their synapses are crackling and all kinds of cognitive pathways are being formed. And they’re hearing words and learning to walk. And they're remembering mom’s and dad’s faces, and they’re getting love and attention all over the place.

The problem for Japuca is about much more than having enough food or clean diapers or cough medicine. The problem is, nobody is loving on her or being goofy with her or singing to her. So we did with a fierce passion for a while--I don’t know how long--couple of hours.

And then we had to go.

She was still beaming at me.

I had to put her in her crib while she whimpered and clawed at the wooden bars (which are totally not safe for babies and were banned in the US, which is why they have them in the Ukraine). And my friend Debbie was putting her baby Ivan in his crib too, and we had to leave; and it was like somebody was ripping into my lower intestines and throwing all my guts on the floor and then stomping on them and then pouring lighter fluid on them and then burning them in a great big pile in the dirty cement hallway. Yeah, it felt like that.

And they were screaming as we left and the screams were just echoing through those awful empty stairwells as we sprinted down the stairs and out the door. And I didn’t think I’d ever breathe again. Because, suddenly, it only felt right to breathe the same air as Japuca and all those kids, even if it stank and nothing was very pretty.

It felt wrong to leave.

And nothing will feel quite right until I go back.

And I will go back. I will bring friends, and we will play as long as we want (maybe forever?), and there will be finger-painting involved.

We can play all kinds of puzzles and Duck Duck Goose and sing-songy things and rhyming games, but mostly I think we will finger-paint. Because every childhood should involve finger-painting. And somehow I think there might be a connection between finger-paint and making Japuca smile again and maybe hearing a word or two, even if they are in Ukrainian or Romanian.

This is one of my kingdom-dreams.


Please pray over it.

Pray that God provides the paint and the program and the plane tickets. Soon.

Please pray for the Roma people.

Please pray for the abandoned kids in that Ukrainian hospital.

Please pray with me for Japuca; pray that someone will hug her today. Pray that someone tries to teach her a word. Pray that somebody will take her for a walk outside. Pray that I will get the chance to love her and many others like her again—in a tangible, present, physical way, not just this prayerful, spiritual way.

Dream with me. Pray with me.

Thanks.

SMACK! PAY ATTENTION

I recently began reading Anne Lamott's Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life. Besides being delightfully witty and fun, it is seeded with great advice on, well, writing and life.

Something I read today:

"An author makes you notice, makes you pay attention, and this is a great gift."

Many times, in an effort to make someone notice, writers (of books, TV scripts, news articles, whatever) get carried away with being overly radical or profane or intellectual or just terribly witty. It's more about them and about the witty words and less about what's actually being said (check out any TV round-table--whether its FOXNews, SportsCenter, or Oprah).

Don't get me wrong; I love words. And it is a joyful thing for me to put them together, to hear a great rustle or smack! in the way words collide. That's nerdy, and it's true. And sometimes it really is okay just to mess around with words. But now and then, I get so caught up in me being noticed for my stunning wordsmithing (you may laugh here--I am) that I forget why I write in the first place.

I write to make someone sit up and pay attention to something that is true. Something that needs to be said. And that starts with being alert, with paying attention to worthwhile things, and that starts with life.

You'll get tired of hearing me say this, but I really am most concerned with being true. I desperately want to write something really great, but I am most concerned with writing something that's worth reading, that needs to be read. So I live with expectant hope that this journey takes me to places that are full of stuff that needs to be said or heard...and that my desire to be great or smart or witty won't get in the way of what's being said. And I suppose, if it turns out to be witty or enjoyable or good now and again, that would be a great surprise, wouldn't it?

That's all for today. Thanks for stopping by.

NOT QUITE FINISHED

Oh, hi there.

I decided we're not quite finished here yet.

I started this blog because I was going on a Hungarian adventure--there was so much to do! to see! to learn! I didn't want to let any of it slink away...I wanted to keep all the smells and rumblings and foreign words and good things and true things and ugly things. I wanted to be true to the people we met, to the places we traveled, to God, and to all of you. I wanted somebody to know how I was growing and changing over there. (Secretly, I also just wanted a place to play around with words.)

Guess what.

Even though I'm not currently world-trekking, I'm still doing that whole living-learning-changing-exploring thing. Because I sort of see life as this great, continuous exploration. That might sound a bit cheesy, childish, or maybe just idealistic--but I figure that God is just brimming over with surprises, and, as long as I'm chilling with him, there's bound to be plenty of adventure involved.

So here we are again!

Learn with me.

Share with me as I share with you.

As always, I promise to be thoughtful, to be honest, and mostly, to live deliberately.

Here goes.

PHOTOS

finally...
the link you've all been waiting for...
dum da da dum!

my web album:
http://picasaweb.google.com/leahnieboer

for your viewing pleasure, the photos are separated into various themes and trips--its probably best to flip through the collection in small doses rather than tackle the whole experience at once. i hope you enjoy this visual snapshot of the semester.

cheers!

(captions coming soon to a computer screen near you...)

EAST and WEST

Along with the general attitude of people I experienced in these latest travels to short trips in Western Europe, I noticed a difference in other aspects of life as well.

In both cities, I arrived expecting to be robbed by the Euro and by the standard of living--but it wasn't terribly expensive to live and travel. There was a marked difference in economic existence; but I simply realized that this contrast was because more people there lived more richly. It wasn't overly posh or dripping with gold--but there were fewer dilapidated buildings, stalled construction projects, out-of-date facilities, less grime.

I didn't think it was necessarily so much better--I enjoyed the trips but still prefer Budapest to both Amsterdam and Vienna. But there was no goliath footprint of communist suppression, no looming communist bloc houses assaulting centuries-old architectural works and monuments. The cities seemed to have progressed "normally" through the past decades without significant interruption of social, economic, and political life. They were just allowed to "be."

Honestly, I think Budapest's Parliament building and Opera house outshine any of the buildings I saw in Western Europe; but it takes a little bit of exploring, a bit of shaving of the outer shell to really find all the beauty in Budapest. The culture is just as rich and even more so here--even if the population is economically poorer.

Budapest is an eastern jewel. She is just largely undiscovered and undervalued.

REFLECTING

Dear friends,

It is January. I am back in Grand Rapids, Michigan, joining my fellow Calvin students trudging through wickedly-deep snow banks, wincing against needle-like gusts of wind on our way to interim classes each day.

I am currently taking a homework break, watching more snowflakes dive-bomb my driveway...and also skimming through blogs, personal journals, class papers, haphazardly-scribbled phrases, and sketches from my semester in Hungary. Each note or reflection gives another flash of clarity to my experience this fall, so I'll post them as I find them. This is one journal I wrote for class after coming back from the Netherlands (November 26-30).

We were standing at the bus stop; dipping and waddling toward us was a group of five or six middle-aged women, bundled as bulkily as we were against the biting December wind newly cutting across the flat fields. But we saw that the arrival of winter in our midst did not dim their happy, mirthful eyes nor cause them to bury silent mouths inside thick scarves; instead they chattered brightly and their joyful, light tones sailed to us on the cold air. When they joined us by the bus stop, taking refuge with us behind the slight wind block, they looked me in the eye and called "Goede!"
I was stunned. This semester, I have not been greeted by a stranger at a bus stop, unless it was a gruff shove of a shoulder or the leering look of an early-morning drunk.
My eyes got big with surprise and I greeted them back with a "Goede morgen" and a smile…an exchange I am well used to in Pella, Iowa. The clear leader of this pack of morning travelers asked me another question in Dutch--but sensing my hesitation, quickly switched to English--not begrudgingly, but gladly, happy to include me in their conversation.
Sometimes I think the Iron Curtain slammed down like a steel gate in people's minds as well as in economic and political spheres in Eastern Europe. And even when the curtain was lifted, and the Berlin Wall knocked down, it seems like there was no key to free the psychological barrier of fear and mistrust that descended like an eternal verdict on this Eastern world.
I love Budapest, and I have been graciously welcomed to warm meals, hot tea, and cozy beds by Eastern Europeans on our group trips. But on the whole, I more often am assaulted by cold shoulders and wary eyes on the daily commute, at the market, in the city. Whereas the people I've met in Amsterdam and Vienna seemed to enjoy public life and leave room for outsiders to enter and participate in their lives, public life is lacking on this side of that iron barrier. We've talked about this in terms of political and social involvement, and we see it tangibly acted out in the daily sphere. Before I went to Amsterdam, I forgot what it was to see people running, canoeing, and exercising outside; to enjoy a friendly smile on a morning tram; to ask a question without a roll of the eyes or resentful spit of words.
That may be one of the only things I miss here in Budapest. The openness.