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.

Confessions of a Hungry Introvert

Tuesday morning and it's quiet.

 

  The children have all gone to school after a four day weekend celebrating the new king's birthday.  That means that my first four days here have been abundant with voices and laughter and reading and worship and eating birthday cake and otherwise loving and being loved.

Over. The. Top.

I am overwhelmed.

Every time I come I learn new things about me.  I know.  I come to teach.  Bible stories and ESL are part of what I do when I come.  And so far that's going well (thank you Ann and Jill for helping to get all those ideas and papers and trinkets ready for the miracles lessons).

 But every time, I am more the student than the teacher.  True fact.

And right now my lessons are layered on top of what I've been learning already in these past two months away from my community of faith.

I hesitate to even mention this again, because I think I've done so in the last five blog posts running, or something like that, and I risk rolling the eyes of my readers.  But honestly, as I sit here in the quiet of a Tuesday morning, this whole need-of-people thing is what continues to surprise the introvert in me.

I am an introvert, somewhat to the extreme, in that I would say that I get my batteries recharged by being alone.  And solitude and silence are gifts to my soul.  And in all my ministry years, past, present and on into the future, my greatest challenge has always been and will always be how to balance this out.  Because....people.

These past weeks away from people I have experienced a beautiful, wretched need that, to be honest, normally I do not.  It's intense and real and uncomfortable and pressing me in ways wonderful and true.  I need my peeps.  I do.

Being here now, and the way this is filling me up, well frankly, sometimes it makes it hard to breathe.

Oh my!

How astonishing delightful it is to sit in the circle and sing together songs I am increasingly able to understand (thanks here to Esther's song book) in the mornings and evenings. 

How simply, deeply good it feels to be surrounded by sweet faces at the tables under the dining shelter, eating birthday cake (thanks here to Deborah and Lawee and David for being born in July) and having nothing else to be doing than just sitting and enjoying the looks on their faces as they devour the very special treat.

How comforting to my away-from soul to sit together for meals (something that's happening more and more as in the beginning I was more usually on my own to eat) and have long, unhurried conversation (which, again, I am increasingly more able to understand), about life and ministry and dreams for the future.  And this with the added bonus of sensing that, while we will always miss Bee, something of the dreadful long night of grieving has passed and joy dominates this place again.

And I am greedy for it all.  The being-with thing. 

Oh my people!  Here and at home!  How I need you!  Desperately, wretchedly, deeply simply, shockingly.

It's an interesting place for an introvert to be.  But it makes sense.  The theology of it is brilliant.  How better to prove that God intended us to do life in family, in community, with each other, than to take an introvert away from it for a while and see what it does to her soul?


I feel a self-induced research paper coming on (she said, robbing the moment of any poetry).  Only my fellow student-geek friends will understand this, I know.  But it makes me want to go looking for how I may have missed some nuances in my Bible before this, even having preached on it so many times before.

Tuesday morning and it's quiet.  And that's okay.  For now.  By four I'll be ready to greet them again.  We've got some serious reading to do if we're going to get this book club thing done before I leave.

My Life In Triplicate

I have three toothbrushes. 

I don’t mean all three in one bathroom, but three different toothbrushes in three very different bathrooms.  Like, permanently.

Same is true for shampoo, conditioner, body wash, hair dryers and other sundry personal items. 

Three!

What’s it called in geometry when there are three overlapping circles and it creates that space in the middle?  Had to look it up, and one very scientific paper describes it as a ‘circular triangle’, or the ‘intersect’ of overlapping circles as in a Venn diagram.  Which is way more math than I’m used to handling, except that it does pretty much describe where my toothbrushes live.

I notice this especially in times like right now, when I’m at my house, simultaneously unpacking from the cottage and packing for Thailand.  Three worlds literally colliding in the hallways, and on the spare beds and sprawled out on the pool table.  I don’t like the mess but I do love the richness of my ‘circular triangle’ intersecting Venn diagram life.  It’s like having a 3D life, vibrant and contoured and pulling me into adventure and depth and  wonder. 

Like living life in triplicate.

 

Deeply at home on Blythwood Road in Waterloo.

Deeply at home on the Freddy Channel in Cognashene.

Deeply at home at Hot Springs in Thailand.

Very.  Deeply.  Home.

Times three.

How did this homebody find a home in so many places? 

How did this control freak release enough order to manage the mess? 

How did such an ordinary little girl end up with such an extraordinary 3D, life-in-triplicate story?

Photo Credit: Dave Driver

‘Circular triangles’ make sense for a Trinity that loves that way.   Being drawn in gently, fiercely because of daring to say yes to a Presence vibrant and contoured and pulling me into adventure and depth and wonder.  Saying yes and yes again until all the floating circles come together for a place astonishing enough to hold three toothbrushes and three homes for my heart.

In the name of the Father,

Son

and Holy Spirit.

He covers me in homes.

Rounding the Point

These past six weeks have provided the opportunity for some serious kayak therapy. 

It didn’t start as therapy.  It started as a challenge to myself to see how many times I could make my way around the entire island this season.   A friend threw out the random number of nine back at the first part of June.  Except for a few stints at home and my upcoming trip to Thailand, I am mostly at the cottage this year all the way through to the beginning of September, and, since I’m already at seven, I’m confident I will surpass this and be setting a new goal even by the end of this week.

Our island is large enough to appear as a small dot on a map of Ontario.  It takes me just a little over an hour to paddle around it, although the gradual increase of my skill is shaving off a few minutes every time, depending on the chop that day.  Mostly I choose times when the water is flat.  And I think that’s where the therapy kicks in.

Being out in the kayak is all things fresh and bright and creation-connective for me.  Water meets sky meets tree line.   Sun all wonderful and warm, with the air wild and worry free.  Riding lower than even in the canoe, I feel more intimacy with the water itself, my two-ended paddle offering its respect with each dip and pull.  My body seems fully engaged and deeply relaxed at the same time, legs and back braced, shoulders and arms in rhythm with the elements.  I breathe with it.  I pray with it.

For every trip around there’s this spot I mark in my mind.  It’s the rocky point that defines half way.  It takes me from the more sheltered, soul-filling waters between islands along the channels, out into the open for a stretch across, before turning back into a bay that takes me the rest of the way, again in waters calm and still and healing.   From this spot on, to turn back makes no sense.  I will have to paddle just as many strokes to get home, either way.    

So at this point, each time, I leave where I’ve come from in order to arrive where I started; home again.

These past six weeks have been uniquely difficult for me, emotionally.  I have let go of one of my life’s best gifts – all planned and properly accomplished, but painfully released just the same.   There’s this rather amazing community of faith I once pastored.  I love that community more than I can articulate.  But I have stepped away, and for a necessary six month period, am separated from so much that my soul has thrived on for over twenty years.   And while this new thing I’m doing also includes pursuing deep passions, there has been, continues to be a shocking depth of grief.  And disorientation.  And fear.

What have I done?

But out in the kayak He speaks. 

Morning sun in full glory this day, only nature sounds the praise.  Rounding the point in rhythm with creation, the Creator reminds me to receive.   Receive the enviable gift of all this time to rest in this sacred space.  Receive the lavish healing of impossible-to-avoid ministry wounds.  Receive the reward of passion-driven work yet to do.

 To paddle back the way I came makes no sense.   I will get home again if I just keep going. 

I am comforted by the invitation to return to my community of faith in due time.  There will be a sense that when that time comes I will feel gloriously at home again, without question. 

But there’s another sense of home in this for me; that understanding that I am where I am supposed to be, doing what I’m supposed to be doing, being who I was created to be.  That’s where I feel I’ve rounded the point.  That’s where this journey is taking me.

With these next five days ahead blocked off for some uninterrupted writing, planning and prayer – another good gift to receive right now – I anticipate His presence and persistent love to pull me further.

And I’ll let you know when I reach nine times around.

New goal? 

Fifteen. 

Another random number,

but something to inspire me forward.