Waxy Wisdom

Eat honey, my son, for it is good;

honey from the comb is sweet to your taste.

Know also that wisdom is like honey for you;

If you find it, there is a future hope for you,

and your hope will not be cut off.

Proverbs 24:13-14

There's a reason my blog is called "Bread and Honey", but I'll get to that in a minute.

It's the afternoon of a Saturday at Hot Springs when we don't really have anywhere to go.  I'm loving the 'just being at home' vibe of this day, hanging out in the shade of the dining shelter.  The kids are engaged in various kinds of creations with paper, markers and glue, all for me to take back to the Sponsors.  Or some are playing chess.  Or some are chopping up vegetables in preparation for the evening meal.  

From this lovely space I look up to see Suradet and one of the older boys heading up the steep hill in the back, carrying a large white pail and a large curved knife, like a machete.  I'm curious, but am soon pulled back into what's happening at the table by someone asking me how to spell their Sponsor's name.  

They're gone for a while.  Probably more than an hour.  So I've forgotten about them until they're coming back down the hill, smiling with victory, and carrying the pail between them and bringing it to the table.

"Chorp nam-peung, mai?"  Do you like water of the bee?, I am asked.

Inside the pail is a large honeycomb, still attached to a branch, and still occupied by a now misplaced bee or two, as well as some larvae.  Dripping in sweetness, this mess is.  And I watch as the comb is tipped up and gently scraped so the honey drips into a bowl.  Wild, unpasteurized, totally non-processed.  Off the side of a hill in a foresty-jungle in northern Thailand.  This is hands down the most exotic honey I have ever been offered.

Someone runs for the loaf of white bread purchased peculiarly for my consumption during my stay.  I am invited to dip the bread in the honey and eat.

At the end of the Bible in the book of Revelation Jesus instructs the Apostle John to describe the way things will be once God ushers in that magnificent promise of history called the 'eschaton', when everything will be restored to a better-than-perfect state of being.  Part of that description includes a picture of a wedding banquet.  A feast.  I am not sure what that kind of food might taste like, but I'm pretty sure, as I dip my bread into this honey, and welcome it into my mouth, I'm actually tasting Glory.

Warm, pure.  Sweet as if  I've never tasted sweet before.  Smooth like slow jazz.  In my mouth there is joy and wonderment.   This is just before supper, but -- I don't care.  A thought crosses my mind about eating something that slid off something that still has bugs in it but -- I don't care.  Wild mountain honey.  Does it get any better than this?

I will email my husband later.  "Today I ate wild mountain honey!"  To which he will respond, "I'm glad you loved it, but I'm just waiting for my wild mountain Honey to come home."  (Major husband points there.)

Back to the Bread and Honey thing. 

Originally I chose the name for this blog because of my love of fresh (usually whole grain) bread smeared with a scandalous amount of honey AND because both bread and honey are images used frequently in the Bible to illustrate soul-hunger, and soul-satisfaction.

In the Proverb quoted above, the sweetness of honey is compared to how the Teacher wants his son (student) to feel about wisdom.  Pursue it, as if it was up on the hill, and you had to go out and find it, and could bring it home to feast on.   And when you did find some, and when you get to eat some of it, it will bide well for you.  And he talks about a future.  And he talks about hope.

Wisdom.  

Don't we all want that?  Don't we all feel like we're needing so much of that in these days of uncertainty?  So many decisions to make right now, pushing us into a future that we're not all that sure about.  

And here's an irony.  It's times like this that synergize the very kind of wisdom we need and long for.  A very wise man once pointed out to me that so often we all want the wisdom, but we're not so keen on the challenging life situations that actually bring it to us.  Not sure he was thinking of a global pandemic, but it fits.

Some days I'm doing this better than others.  

Some days I'm all over learning from the experience and letting it grow me.

Some days, not so much, truth be told.

Some days, I'm all about resisting the restrictions and feeling the weight of this long duress.

Remembering the honey helps.

In these days when we need hope for better days -- and they will come, don't doubt it for a minute -- how amazing that we get to be part of something this big and this wild, with all this potential to make us wiser for the living out of the rest of our lives.

Hungry now.

The Radiating Huddle

It's cold and that surprises me.

Dealing with the heat has always been a constant distraction every single time I've travelled to Thailand.  But this time it's January and I'm way up in the mountains for a New Year's visit to Suradet's home village.  The demanding drive and mountain air and utter novelty of being here have left me spent but surprisingly content to simply sit and warm myself by the fire.

Every yard has one, and a big black pot of water for tea.  I'm asked if I want some and, not exactly sure what I'll be getting, I say yes anyways.  The young woman who asked me now looks around for a cup.  She can't find a clean one so she simply throws away the leftover tea from the cup of the man who just now left our circle, swirls some hot water around in it, and fills it up to offer to me.  

This keeps happening.  The coming and going of people around our fire, and the sharing of a common cup.  Anyone who strolls past is known, and called by name, and invited to sit for a bit.  And everyone does, at least for a little bit.  I'm told later that there are more visitors tonight than usual.  They've come by to see for themselves that a farang woman has actually come all the way up to their village.  I'm only the second or third white person who's done that in, oh, nobody can remember how long, and the first white woman.

There's casual chit chat, and a unhurried way about it.  A cup is swished out and offered for tea.  And then the visitor says thanks to everyone and moves along.  And somehow, I am welcomed into all of this.  I sit warmed by more than just the fire.  There's a quiet wonder in these moments.  

One visitor is more curious and perhaps a little more bold than the others.  I am asked about Canada.  Is there snow?  Does the government pay for school?  For doctors?  How big is my house?  As I answer these questions the responses indicate a certain amount of awe, or even envy.  The bold one says he wants to come to Canada.

I smile and invite him - the only appropriately polite response to give - but also feel the need to make another comparison.

On my street, I say, there are no campfires.  Mostly people stay in their houses or in their own fenced in yards.  And mostly we don't even know each other, not on our street anyways.  There's a pause. 

And then I am asked: But what about church? 

This is a predominately Christian village.  The church building is a central focus, and there are prayers every morning and every evening.  On Sundays almost everyone shows up for service.  And everyone walks there.  Probably there are about a hundred people in the village.  The village is the church.  So, how can you not know your neighbours?

I try to explain.  There are a lot of churches in my village, I say.  We don't usually go to the church closest to our houses.  We drive there.  From all over.  As I say it and even before it's translated I realize how crazy-foreign it must sound to these community-centric people.  

And yes.  There are audible sounds of polite confusion.  

I have preached likely hundreds of sermons on community.  And suddenly, in this moment, I realize I actually know nothing.  I know nothing of the bonds of common survival; of the interdependence that requires I share and receive in ways utterly reciprocal.  I know nothing of an evening spent wandering the dirt pathways between homes and campfires, with nothing more important to do than spend time huddled around a big black pot of tea meant for sharing.  

Where on earth did any human being ever get the idea that independence was a desired thing?

Fast forward almost four years to when a microscopic menace keeps us separated and un-huddled.  I am decidedly in Canada.  Now, even the once-a-week-drive-to community touch points are strained.  We're in our houses even more.  And no amount of swishing would make it anywhere near safe to share a cup.  We can't even share the air we breathe.

Except maybe now I feel my need more correctly.  The bonds of common survival are strengthening from the stretching stress of separation.  The ways I need you and am needed by you are more clear to me.  And suddenly 'porch picnics' and other physically distanced ways of sitting unhurried together on warmer days are amazing and relished.  And, in anticipation of the colder Canadian weather, that priority of presence over productivity remains, even when we have to do it over the phone or online.  

I'm warmed and this surprises me.

The fire of our fierce determination to be community for one another, in any culture and any crisis, provides a circle in which I can belong.  I need this - I need you so much!

Can we huddle together this winter?  Can we huddle AND radiate that warmth outward at the same time, like a mountain village community, always welcome in each other's space?   Can we draw in and draw strength from one another, even as we keep looking outward for anyone who needs to come close to the fire too.

Can we huddle in a radiating kind of way?

I hope so.  

We'd better.  

We're going to need it.  

Desperately.  

I do.  

Pounded Sticky Rice and Other Surprising Culinary Wonders

 

This purplish blob may not look so appetizing, but right at this moment it's making me so hungry!!! It's pounded mountain sticky rice, served on a banana leaf, and it's amazing! Especially when it's warm and stretchy and rolled in a bit of raw cane sugar.

I was torturing myself by sorting through some of my Thai pictures (an ever-ending filing job truth be told) and I came across this and other foodie shots of some of the more unusual dishes I've actually come to love. I can say without a doubt, in these days of travel bans and closed borders, I am missing Thailand with my whole heart. I guess it's also true that I'm missing Thailand with my whole stomach as well.

Yupa is an amazing cook. Many of the pictures here are dishes from her kitchen. And I am convinced that the very best, very most authentic Thai food comes from her kitchen. Yupa Chaing Mai you have no idea how wide is the scope of all the ways I miss you right now!

On the fork, see that? That's the famous 'dancing shrimp' dish that utterly shocked me at first, but by now has become something of a tradition for every trip. Yes, my friends, these delicacies are still alive when served to you. That's their appeal, apparently. The dish is really spicy so I don't end up eating very much. Just enough to maintain my Thai-foodie status. And I must say that it took me about six or seven trips to work up to this. A LOT of those who have travelled with me have managed on their very first try. Evangeline Wilton Bill aka Céline Marcoux-Hamade, Rebecca Shirer, Sheldon Connor, Esther Weatherall Jonathan Gabber, Emerson Emerson Gabber -- did I miss anyone? -- You have my utmost admiration. And Erin Wildsmith you are also among those who have crunched the bugs. So much missions trip street cred there. (No pictures of that, you're welcome.)

I'm a little off track here. Because what I was really thinking about is how much richer and wondrous and tasty my life is because of this rich and wondrous and delicious connection with my family half a world away.

And it's not just my stomach that's hungry. My heart is in a state of longing that testifies to the painful part of love. Right about now the weather in northern Thailand is just starting to get a little cooler. Rainy season is almost over, and the mornings will soon be fresh. The sleepy kids will file in for morning worship, and after school ....if I was there....we would read together.

Life is rich, and sometimes sad. But often the sadness means something important and wonderful also happened.

Sunday blessings my friends.

The Stuff We're Made Of (A sappy-but-true forty-second anniversary lilt)

 

Oh Love.

I’d do it all again.

Even the hard stuff.

Because of what our life together

has made of us,

what God has wrought from it

and who we’ve become

in the grace of each other.

I'm a me I'd never be

if not for you.

 

And look!

(Some numbers because you love them)

There was just two of us at first.

Now there’s eleven plus one.

Plus thirty give or take.

This I never could have imagined for us!

Who knew this would be the ‘us’ of us

at forty-two.

He knew.

 

Happy, happy us day,

My Love.

My Hero.

My partner in all things.

My God-send, in truth.

BEAUTIFUL DOCKS OF HONEST IMPERFECTION

Rebuilding the dock.  It’s one of the cottage tasks this year and so far, things are progressing nicely.  Grandad and Zachary are doing this together.  They make a good team, their early bond providing an intuitive communication and cooperative flow between them.  I watch them from the deck with deep and quiet joy. 

Love this! Two generations working together making something strong.  Grandad provides instruction, Zachary follows through.  He’s given the responsibility of the small rechargeable drill and then some freedom to go ahead and extract the screws from the old boards, experimenting with ways that work best for him.  There’s banter back and forth.  Grandad being silly at times, Zachary still finding this amusing since he’s not quite yet a teenager.  And questions about the project, why the old wood has shrunk and split, and why we need to space the boards out, and why certain screws are best for this task.

Then two things.

It becomes apparent that the original strategy of replacing certain boards first isn’t going to work due to some sizing issues.  Some of what they’ve done they’ll have to do again.  I am impressed with how Grandad explains this to Zachary without any sense of frustration or self recrimination.  Just more of an ‘oh well, let’s start again’ attitude, that Zachary picks up and applies to what needs to be done next. 

They work in silence for a bit.  And then Grandad steps on the end of a board he thought was attached and narrowly misses injury in the slapstick smack-thud of his clutzy landing.  Despite the kafuffle, in the end he is upright and unscathed, even his pride.  “Meant to do that,” he says immediately.  Zachary has a good laugh, and they keep working.

And it strikes me that this is what is needed when two generations work together to make something strong.  The willingness to make mistakes in front of someone is essential to mentoring.  And it makes you vulnerable.

The year 2005 was a turning point in my own mentoring experience.  There was a big transition, and now, suddenly it seemed, I was heavily into mentoring.  In fact, I wrote in my journal that I felt like I was entering into an era where this was the main contribution I would now make to my work; to identify and pour into the next generation in the way I had been called out and poured into myself.

It’s exciting, invigorating work, mentoring.  But it requires a steadfast resolve to allow yourself to be seen.  To allow others to learn from watching you make mistakes, as much as watching you do what you do well.  And even more, as Ken so beautifully demonstrates, a teaching of how to manage mistakes and failures, both strategically and emotionally.

I don’t relish this part of mentoring.  In fact, in some cases, I know this kind of honesty has cost me, as mentees make their own judgements and step away to find perhaps a more perfect teacher.  It’s why some of us sometimes try to pretend we’ve got it all together.  Risking that kind of judgement and rejection takes a kind of ‘leaving ourselves alone’ and  ‘oh well, let’s start again’ kind of attitude that not all of us possess.

But I am so incredibly grateful for the essential gift my mentors gave to me in letting me in up close to hear and see the imperfections, the misjudgements, the bad calls; and how we thought it through, worked it out, sought forgiveness and carried on.  For me, their vulnerability was a strength.  I admire them all the more.

I’m interested in the Church, of course.  Of rebuilding intergenerationally.  Taking off the old boards that don’t serve us well anymore, and finding ways of working together to make something strong to tie our boats to for the future.   Especially now, in a new world full of Covid challenges that force us to rethink everything.  And, in order to continue to be all we’re called to be, there’s important work for us to do, intergenerationally. 

I happen to believe we can do it best together.

Some Good Reasons Times A Bazillion

I'll begin this post with the acknowledgement that, at the time of this writing, one grandson, Harvest, is still outside my own 'social circle' due to living circumstances that need to be honoured.  My Gramma heart is eager for the day my whole family can be together in one space.  Believe me, in our story, that kind of togetherness is not something we take for granted.

Harvest, I miss you and hope we can all be at the cottage together this summer.
Deep sigh.
We'll see.

Harvest age 3, getting ready for the St. Jacob's train ride!

______________

Probably, we all have our own reasons.
To stay 6 feet apart.
To wear a mask.
To stay within our social circle.
To respect the restrictions in the stores.
To wash our hands while we sing Happy Birthday.
And to use hand sanitizer when we can't.
To stay away from a crowded beach.
To refrain from even some of what's now allowed,
just to give that added layer of protection.

We have our reasons.

Here are some of mine.

Abby, long and lanky, still willing to swing a little with Gramma and lay her head on my shoulder while we talk about nail polish colours and plan our spa treatments once we get to the cottage.

Abby, 14, grade 8 graduation

Zachary, tall and talkative, telling me every detail about his newest Lego creation or the wild and wacky dream he had last night, which remarkably can happen in one run on sentence that lasts a full 10 minutes or so.

Zachary, 6, just before Gramma went to Thailand for three months.

Jayden, cute and confident, quick to unlearn the dreadful-but-necessary-rule-for-a-while not to run wildly up to Gramma for a hug, and who competes now to be the first.

Jayden, 3, first time back at Gramma's house

And Harvest, now 9-going-on-10, pictured above, who, by the way, when we're all together and I call out that it's lunch time and we need to wash our hands, is the first to respond, every time!

Of course there's this new one, hoped for and prayed over like perhaps no other baby, due to arrive in August and already fiercely loved.

Baby Boy, can't wait to meet in August

These are my reasons.
Some of the more important ones.

There's nothing I'm so eager to 'get back to' that is worth jeopardizing the delicate, newly-won privilege of wild-running-up hugs, or little moments in the swing, or up close and personal dream-stories, or the hello-Gramma of an unborn baby's kick.  Nothing I want so much that I would risk bringing infection to my daughter at this point in the game (or ever).  Nothing so important that I would risk pushing Harvest's return to our circle any further out.

This is a gift. 
One gift of so many, actually, brought to us, courtesy of Covid-19:
The distillation of what we already knew was precious,
but now is that times a bazillion.

My Pandemic Birthday

My face is cold but only my face.  The rest of me stays snug under cottage-fleece blankets, listening to Ken, already awake, getting his breakfast, and hoping he’ll make a fire, which he does, and my birthday is off to a cozy start.

The water is flat and the sun bright, but I’m not all rushing down to the dock just yet.  We got the kayak out of the boathouse yesterday and it was such a mess.  Somehow - even propped up and on its side – it got filled with brackish sludge that now floods the once-dry, slimy wooden floor in not-in-decades water levels.  We got it out and parked beside the dock, but it will take a good cleaning before a pleasant paddle could be had.  This I’m thinking wrapped in my housecoat sipping tea caught in the tension between by my mad desire for that first of season paddle and my shivery shelf enjoying the fire. 

But the mad desire wins, and I head down with towel-rags to undo the mucky damage.  There.  Not quite pristine but good enough.  And just like that with a silent push, I’m off, suspended now in that space between the ridiculous and sublime, like the morning mist that still caresses the surface of the water, mystically, as if some magic was lifting, leftover from last night.

And oh, this is pouring in and filling up and healing.  Silent gliding on glass flat water, sun happy happy above in a sky silly with blue.  And the heron and the young family of geese don’t mind me.  And in spite of myself I find I am weeping in their welcome.  I am welcomed onto the water with them.  And I didn’t know how badly I need this.  Sounds foolish, I know. 

It’s a water snake, I think, making its way across the partially submerged swimming raft tied to the side of the dock.  A long one, maybe a meter, all brown and shiny and snakishly beautiful, flipping off now into the water on the other side, making good speed along the shoreline.

Lunch down by the water with Ken, unfolds itself to some time in my space on the desk.  The wind has come up just a little.  Enough to keep the mosquitoes at bay. 

The jenny wrens have abandoned the birdhouse and are building a nest under the eves almost above my head.  In this they are welcome, being such good company and cheerful heralds of each new morning, as they have done for many seasons already.  I find comfort in their quick visits close on the rail of the deck, twigs and other building materials in beak, before they flit up to keep on with the project.  It’s nice to be trusted.

And this is how God gifts me this birthday.  I think He started, actually, yesterday.  Yesterday I slept.  Pretty much the entire day.  Still can’t believe it myself.  Up at 5:11 a.m. with a plumbing emergency.  A yikes-get-the-towels-turn-off-the-pump-which-pipe-is-it-this-time kind of emergency.  The kind that has plagued this opening so far.  Even so, we’re both in good spirits, and when it’s all mopped up and there’s warm oatmeal in our bellies, the fire would make a good place to read for a bit.  Or sleep.  Which I did on and off until lunch.  And after lunch I had a nap.  Mostly until supper.  And after supper and a time down at the dock and a game of Scrabble, I still went to bed before sundown.  And slept all night.  How is that possible?  Except maybe I needed it.  Except maybe it was a pre-birthday gift that I was badly in need of and didn’t know.

We waited until they said it was okay, this coming up to the cottage thing.  I tell myself that every time I ask, “why didn’t we do this sooner?”  Oh yeah.  There’s a pandemic thing going on.  Except up here, I can’t tell. 

Today, for my birthday, I’ve been given an extraordinary gift of not knowing.  I don’t know who’s protesting what, either peacefully or violently, what Ontario’s latest Covid numbers are, or our Region’s or Canada’s or the world’s, or how many people died in the last 24 hours by disease or hatred or anything else.  This gift is priceless right now.

Believe me.  The great imbalance of blessing on my life right at this moment is not lost on me.  Not for a moment.  Gratitude and humility and wonder all around.  And I treasure this moment and save it up against anything that’s coming that won’t be like this, when I’ll need to remember that one perfect pandemic birthday when I turned 63.

And friends, dear, dear friends and beloveds, oh I wish I could give you some of this!  We all need so badly to be in ‘not-pandemic’ mode for long enough to breathe deep and long enough; to sleep enough; to just be a human being, instead of a human, being in the midst of such a long duress. 

And I’ll keep preaching that, and practicing what I preach about that.  About it not being about place or circumstance but about frame of mind.  About knowing that the deep peace of Christ that ‘passes understanding’ isn’t explained by the rationale given the stressors.  It’s about having a mind ‘stayed on Thee’ and finding a sweet spot of peace even as everything rages or just simply tediously persists among us.

Sending love and courage and joy and peace and the gift of not-knowing, if you can swing it.

Monday.

The week is just beginning!!