So Many Books, And Now Some Time

“Every time I think I understand what is happening, I am surprised by something new. 

Perhaps one of the hallmarks of an abiding passion

is that it always provokes new thinking and learning.”

Judith Lingenfelter.

Author, missionary and cultural analyst.

I’m home now and the back patio has replaced the cottage deck for my go-to place to read.  Either that or a corner I’ve set up in my home office.  Or when the weather turns cooler, in the family room by the fire.  Or, let’s face it, there’s always a book beside my bed.  Okay, yes.  I guess I’ll read just about anywhere.

Over these past three months of a different way of life there’s been a bit more room for reading.  Good thing because, as I’ve mentioned here before I’m sure, my current course is a Directed Reading and Research credit, which just assumes they’ll be lots of reading.  Two thousand pages, to be precise, and that’s just what’s necessary to collect the data needed for the research paper. 

But never mind.  I’m bookish enough for this to be a delight, especially with all these wonderful places available to me to curl up in and hunker down with a good book.  In fact I’m doing other reading besides what’s required for my course, because, well, a lot of reasons.  They’ve been recommended by a friend.  They were written by a friend.  They’re on tap for a fascinating discussion in this amazing discussion group I’m part of.  They’ve been in my ‘want to read’ pile for I don’t know how long.  The title sounds like it will disturb me in good ways.   I have to justify my book spending somehow.  Lots of reasons. 

And what a rich three months of reading it’s been.

So I thought I’d share some of my favourite quotes, just for some random reflections, and to see if any of it ‘provokes new thinking and learning’ for us together.  Who knows?

_____

On the risks of being influenced by relationships, Parker Palmer suggests,

“Otherness, taken seriously, always invites transformation, 

calling us not only to new acts and theories and values 

but also to new ways of living our lives 

– and that is the most daunting threat of all.”   

(2017)

_____

On the maturing process, Ronald Habermas observes, 

(Stage theorist) Piaget concludes that all people constantly move 

between disequilibrium and equilibrium.  

 Because the latter is so uncomfortable

....most of us are motivated to resolve unsettling conditions 

and to seek equilibrium as soon as possible.   

As painful as disequilibrium is, here’s the important lesson:   

Nobody can grow cognitively without disequilibrium. (emphasis mine)

This one interested me because of the disequilibrium we experience in cross-cultural experiences.  And, come to think of it, the disequilibrium of moving from one life-focus to another. 

_____

On our obsession as evangelicals particularly with getting all our doctrine “right” and that bringing as sense of order and control over our lives, theologian and muck disturber (he’d like that I said that I think) Peter Enns states,

“Then we can see the inevitability to letting go of the need to know and trust God instead 

– as best we can each moment – because God is God.  

 Trust like this is an affront to reason, the control our egos crave.   

Which is precisely the point.  Trust does not work because we have captured 

God in our minds.  It works regardless of the fact that, at the end of the day, 

we finally learn that we can’t.”

This book is disturbing me in all the good ways.  God is too big to figure out, this I have experienced for myself.  I love Enns' humility.  Oh how arrogant we Bible folks can be!

____

Tremper Longman and John Watson like to shake it up a bit too when they point out,

“[T]he Bible is not hesitant to describe historical events hyperbolically 

to produce an effect in the reader in order to make a theological point.”

This one just makes me go "hmmmmmmm."  Looking forward to the discussion on this!

_____

And then, from a book that was waiting for me when I got home with a title that might not suit everyone, Parker Palmer again (who can turn a phrase like few others),

“Above all, I like being old (he’s approaching 80) 

because the view from the brink is striking, a full panorama of my life 

– and a bracing breeze awakens me 

to new ways of understanding my own past, present, and future.”  

 (2018)

I have a feeling I’m going to be glad I'm reading this now, when I’m in my early 60s.  Lots of wisdom to gain from this brilliant and loving soul.

_____

So, like I said, a random sampling and a smattering of thoughts.  Without a doubt it is helping to “provoke new thinking and learning”, even launching me into new and different ways of approaching this next adventure I'm on.

And because this blog post isn't book-nerdy enough already, I’m going to go ahead and include the bibliography.  

Enjoy.

Enns, Peter. The Sin of Certainty: Why God Desires our Trust More Than Our “Correct” Beliefs,

New York: Harper One, 2016.

Habermas, Ronald T.  Introduction to Christian Education and Formation: A Lifelong Plan

            for Christ-Centered Restoration, Grand Rapids:  Zondervan, 2008.

 Lingendfelter, Judith E. & Sherwood  G. Linenfelter, Teaching Cross-Culturally:  An Incarnational 

          Model for Learning and Teaching, Michigan: Baker Academic, 2003.

Longman, Tremper III & John Watson.  The Lost World of the Flood:  Mythology, Theology, and the

                Deluge Debate,  Downers Grove:  InterVarsity Press, 2018.

Palmer, Parker J.  The Courage to Teach: Exploring the Inner Landscape of a Teacher’s

            Life, 20^th Anniversary Ed.  Sommerset: Jossey-Bass, 2017.

___________ . Palmer, Parker K., On the Brink of Everything:  Grace, Gravity & Getting Old,       

            Oakland: Berrett-Koehler Publishers Inc., 2018.

The Time Between

There’s a space in my travels back and forth around the planet

where I really do not know what time it is. 

My psyche doesn’t register as being in any one time zone.  I’m all wonked out.  Normally it hits me on the layover.  They’ll announce the local time on the plane just before we land.  It will even show on the clocks in the airport.  But it’s not real time for me. 

I’m in between.

This is not yet jet lag.  That will come as I spin my way through the first week home.  No, this is something else.  Something in between.  Just this time-weirdness for a little bit when I’m not sure where I am, what day it is, where I’ve been, where I’m going, ......who I am. 

Plus, in the case when I’m on my way home, I’m tired and all wrung out from the goodbye. 

Time is such a ‘thing’. 

In a previous life (aka up until May 27 of this year) I never had enough of it.   Any semblance of ‘balance’ or ‘Sabbath’ was valiantly wrestled from the grips of a schedule full of expectation and responsibility, and sometimes crisis.   The only sustained experience of something slower happened on vacation up at the cottage, or, ironically, in Thailand, as weird as the travelling bit is.

Both at the cottage and in Thailand there’s a different capture of time.

At the cottage there’s really no place to go.  That sounds terrifying to some of you, I know.  But for me it means a complete day – a string of days actually – when I can let the rhythms of the day carry me from moment to moment without any sense of urgency, any pressure to be anywhere at any given....time.  So if the kayak paddle around the island takes a little longer, no worries.  If lunch happens a little later, no problem.  If I get engrossed in some reading or some planning or some study or some writing, oh well.  I am not expected to be anywhere, so, I can take my....time.

In Thailand, time is a different thing than it is at home.  Event-oriented cultures walk slower, gather more gradually, allow for delays, embrace each moment in ways Western thinkers don’t even know happens on the planet.  There is patience.  No one rushes you.  In fact, if at any moment I appear to be in a hurry because I think someone is waiting on me, I am gently and lovingly chided with “Ahajahn Root.  Jai yen yen.”  Settle down your heart, is what it literally means. 

And over the years, both these spaces have taught me much about how I engage time;  the good ways and the not so good.

I’m more than a week back from my last trip, and jet lag is done.  But in these last few days at the cottage (for now, back up in September to close), I am starting to be more aware of something.  As I start to set up appointments and put other events on the calendar for the months ahead, as my list gets a little longer and I’m planning out what my new life, my new schedule is going to look like ‘back in the city’, I realize this whole past three months has been like sitting in the airport on the layover.

One long layover.   Not in a bad way though.  Rather in a very, very good, needed, healing measure of time.

I arrived at the beginning of June and endured a state of weirdness for a bit, where I wasn’t sure where I was, what day it was, where I’d been, where I was going, ......who I am. 

Plus, leaving Highview, like leaving Thailand, had me tired and all wrung out from the goodbye. 

But in the gift of this time....

Time to rest.

Time to recover.

Time to reflect.

Report.

Read.

Reset for this new thing....

I waited.

And it worked.

Jai yen yen.  My heart has had the chance to settle down.

And while I will always miss components of my life as a pastor in a local church,

And while this necessary time away from gathering in worship there is still difficult

I think I now have a better grasp of who I am in this new space of life,

How much it actually means to me to be available to God for this,

All the many joys and blessings of it.

I think, I say slowly to myself, I think, I am going home happy.

I think....

 the in between ....

is done.

And in this still-quiet space of water and rock

 which itself is such a gift,

I can listening so deeply and un-distractedly

to the Voice of the One who loves me best,

I think I hearing Him saying ....

It’s time.

The psalmist expresses well my sense of settled-ness right now.

Psalm 131

My heart is not proud, LORD

My eyes are not haughty;

I do not concern myself with great matters

Or things too wonderful for me.

But I have calmed and quieted myself,

I am like a weaned child with her mother;

Like a weaned child I am content.

Israel, put your hope in the LORD

Both now and forevermore.

Who Are Those People In The Photograph?

It’s forty years and we are not the same people.

We’ve found a quiet spot out by the Champlain Monument to watch the sunset, exchange our gifts, and eat some cake.  One of the bonuses of celebrating an anniversary at the cottage.  And it suits us.  Nothing too fancy, out in our boat (named Token Truth because the name contains both our names – see what we did there?), simple gifts, mushy cards, and 40 years of life together.

I think it’s perfectly fine that we barely resemble that couple in our wedding photos.  Because we’re not the same people we were back then.  How could we be?  Back on that day, August 19, 1978, we were just at the beginning of this transformational experience called marriage.

It changes you.  It’s changed us.  Our marriage has been the most constant and significant environment by which God has provided the opportunity for us to cooperate with Him in our becoming whole and holy, our spiritual transformation.   We haven’t always cooperated so easily.  There’s been a lot of wrestling for control, selfishness, dysfunction, baggage, and general mayhem in the mix.   But in those moments when we let God be God between us, when we chose the other over ourselves, when we pushed forward into trust over and over again, we became more together than we’d ever have been on our own. 

Martial therapist David Schnarch says, “Stop working on your marriage. Realize that your marriage is working on you.”   

In these moments sharing cake with my Beloved (in which he leaves his extra icing for me) I am overwhelmed again with the fullness of my life and the great blessings particularly of this stage of life.  I don’t know why we complain about getting old (other than the aches and pains, I get that).  These are rich years, deeply lived years, years of great reward for all of life’s labours.  Marriage has been a labour, yes.  But oh the wealth that’s been wrung from the woes! 

And of course, I have to say, that all of what I know about this is because I’m married to Ken.  Ken the guy who turned out to be just who I needed when I was a scared, insecure 15 year old AND who grew with me to become just who I need now. 

So here we are, forty years later, launching together into ways of living that are taking us places we’d never have imagined.  Receiving God’s good gift of love over and over again, despite ourselves.  Knowing that we are forever changed by one another, and the gracious way God poured Himself into this covenant we made so long ago.

Happy Anniversary Love.  I am not the same because of you.

My Duct-Taped-Again Thai-English Bible

Sigh.  I still have a long way to go.

Several years ago now, I purchased a Thai- English Bible to help me in both my own language study and also to have it close at hand when preaching or teaching at Hot Springs.  Truth be told, it's one of about a dozen Bibles I regularly use, and those Bibles don't represent my entire collection.  I have a wide variety of translations and paraphrases, different fonts for easy reading when preaching, parallel Bibles, Hebrew Bibles, Greek Bibles, German Bibles, antique Bibles, ...you name it, if it represents the Christian canon, I likely have it.

If it's true what they say, that "It's not hoarding if it's books", then it certainly has to be okay when it's Bibles?  Right?  I mean, really.

Right now, it might be sounding like I'm proud of all the Bibles I have, but that's not the point of me telling you all this, and I'm not done yet, so hold on.

My Thai-English Bible is one that takes quite a beating.  It is opened every day, along with my Hebrew and Greek Bibles, as part of my regular transcribing discipline of one verse every day from each Testament in all four languages.  Not only that, but my Thai-English Bible has a lot of air miles registered as it has come back and forth with me now for -- I've lost count.

With all that wear, and perhaps maybe because of less than robust binding techniques in Thailand where it was printed, the cover, even yes the hard cover, started to break down along the spine quite some time ago.  I did one fix with duct tape.  Not pretty, but functional.  And that seemed to work for a while.

But just before coming for this current trip, the duct tape started to rip apart, and the Bible became quite unsightly.  I put it in my budget to buy another one while I was here because, one can never have too many Bibles, and this one was clearly on its last legs.

In the first few days upon arrival here I mentioned to Yupa that I would like to visit the Christian bookstore in Chiang Mai to purchase a new Bible.  I showed her my tattered volume as proof of the urgent need.

And that's when I got 'the look'.

Not "the look" but a fun expression just the same.

 One of the joys of this incarnational, live stream, on site, real time, becoming part of the family way that my connection with Hot Springs has gone, is the delight of getting to know these people in deeper ways, familiar ways, connecting ways.  Yupa's facial expressions are vivid and revealing and delightful, in all the scope of them; as a Mom expressing dismay at the collection of old sports socks and popsicle sticks in a backpack; as a happy participant in our reading program sounding out the English words; as a sometimes exasperated wife (yes, it happens and it's so fun to watch them); and as a still-grieving Mom (with the second anniversary of Bee's death approaching at the end of this month).  Her face is a wide open book, and I love that about her, and I love that I can know more about what's going on in her heart and head even as I still learn the language.

But there's one 'look' Yupa has that is rather specific to Yupa.  It's when she disagrees but still wants to be polite.  It's sort of a mix of mild confusion with a squint of discernment and a twinkle of hope that she might convince you otherwise.

This is how she looked at me when I said I needed another Bible. " Really?"  (And this she said, not knowing how many other Bibles I have already at home.)

Then she pulled out some duct tape from a drawer and held it up.

So this is where I'm going.  It's often not until I'm here that I remember how much I am the product of my "privileged" life.

Why does it not occur to me that I can just duct-tape this Bible again?  How is it that I feel justified in spending another $30 on yet another Bible, when in truth, this one might not look pretty, or even preacher-worthy (cringe), but it's intact otherwise?  My spending expectations are completely enmeshed in the way I understand the world, and in that world, I basically can buy quite a bit without having to think too hard or too long about it.

Let me hasten to correct any misunderstandings.  I consider myself to be frugal by regular Western standards, and I likely am.  But compared to what Yupa lives with?  The gap is cavernous.  My journey toward simplicity continues at an embarrassingly tedious pace. 

So here I am again, duct-taping my Bible.  And it looks not so bad really in the end.  And I am humbled by it in more ways than one.

I've been on this quest before.  Between August 2016 and August 2017 I was on a 'clothing fast' where I determined not to purchase any piece of clothing other than that which was truly essential.  And even though I shop a lot at Value Village and other discount places, and would not have considered myself a clothes person at all, it was a difficult experience.  For one year I was reminded repeatedly that there are many things I want that I don't really need, and I just buy them without thinking too much about it.

Maybe I need to do this again.  Maybe with clothes.  Maybe with books (gasp! - With the exception of course texts, right?).  Maybe with Christmas spending.  I'm not sure.  But Yupa is my teacher in this.

Yupa, by the way, has NO clothing budget at all.  She makes do with pass me rounds and gifts.  That's it.

Sigh.  I still have a long way to go.

Again With the Mirrors

Reflection is everything.

It's one of the ways I am realizing that my time in Thailand is similar to my time at the cottage.

It's about three trips in when I first notice this parallel.  That there is something about being here at Hot Springs that puts me in mind of being in Georgian Bay.  It isn't so much a comparison of physical environment - there's no body of water here to speak of, and it's the opposite of solitude when you've got 20 some kids in the mix.  But it's more of a spiritual, emotional thing.  How I feel.  About a lot of things, but, with the mirrors, it's about how I feel about myself.

There are no full length mirrors at the cottage.  Neither are there any here, at least that I have easy access to.  Here I have one small mirror above the sink, and one magnifying mirror I bring with me.  At the cottage there's a decent sized mirror in the bathroom, again above the sink.  But the two other mirrors there are antique, mottled from the constant exposure to the winter's cold, I suppose,.  We keep them because they actually look artistic, and, let's face it, the place wouldn't be the same without them.

The result of this minimal mirror thing in each of these places is that I'm not seeing my reflection so much.  Enough to blow dry my hair and put on whatever little makeup is necessary.  But not enough to really spend any significant time critiquing my appearance. 

What ends up happening instead is that I am left to understand myself in other ways.

Here at Hot Springs lavish complements are the normal part of conversation.  Any opportunity to encourage one another by mentioning anything at all that you like or admire about the other person is taken full advantage of.  This they do with me (and other visitors would testify to this) and with one another.  If you see something good, mention it.  If you like something, say so.   And, it would seem, when you foster this habit, there's always something nice to say.

Apparently all my shirts are very beautiful, my hair is lovely, my nails are pretty, my heart is kind, and I speak Thai very well.  This I am told daily and often.   Now, in terms of other realities, I'm the heaviest woman here by - never mind, my other physical features don't hold a candle against the beauty of a Thai smile, and I'm struggling with the language all the time.  So I take in all these complements with a proverbial grain of salt (which might more accurately be a grain of rice here).  Still, I do take them in.  And there's a mystic effect to my self-understanding.  They hold up mirrors I can embrace without self-judgement.  They reflect who I want to become.

At the cottage, with solitude fully in play, and times on the dock at sunset a daily joy, and with opportunity to eat deeply of the honey of Scripture, I don't have a steady stream of compliments from others to consider.  Instead, I see reflected back at me the image my Creator wants me to see.  God's mirrors show me who I am.  Surprisingly, this is not the terrifying, shaming experience I once feared it would be.  Instead, He shows me who He already knows I will become, and woos me along towards that finished masterpiece.

Lest this sound rather self-indulgent, it actually is one of my faith's most compelling doctrines; that God sees me as the object of all He can offer, His masterpiece, His precious treasure.  And so much more.  

So, if God Himself wants to hold up His mirror and tell me incredible things about myself, I will work with Him to rid myself of the old ways of thinking that only seem to want to tear me down.  I can embrace this without self-judgement, since He, through Christ, has taken care of all of that judging stuff already. 

I will not do away with the mirrors at home.  I have some weight to lose and I actually do need their motivation.  And who wants to walk around with something trailing along behind you that you didn't notice because you were in too much of a hurry to check in the full length mirror?

But really.  This no-mirrors thing is such a gift.

It's a process. 
But I feel it here.
I feel it at the cottage. 
I want to bring this into every day. 
Not just for me. 
But for all the beautiful, shining souls around me who need to hear the good things about them.  Desperately. 
Like I do. 
So we can all believe together that we can become all God is dreaming we can be.