Signs (the non-horror film variety)

In huge block letters on the back of an eighteen-wheeler: "ATTEND THE CHURCH OF YOUR CHOICE." (Thank you, I already do. Did you want to tell me to floss my teeth, too?)

Seen on a van, driving around Redlands: "AAA Battery Replacement Service." I didn't know such existed. Finally, someone you can call when your Singing Teddy Bear stops working or your kitchen timer gives that last dying beeeeep.

And my favourite, on a road sign in the mountains: "High Flash Flood Risk Due To Fire."

Always room for one more

They say you can tell a lot about a family by what is on their refrigerator door. Maybe it's true.

Our refrigerator door is, perhaps, motley. Two overworked magnets work together to hold up eight pictures of our family and friends. A third magnet, light on the magnetism part, holds up a drawing of Jim on one knee in front of Sharon, a word bubble enclosing the carefully outlined words

Will
You M-
arry
M
E
?

A beautiful wedding invitation which recently arrived in the mail adds elegance to the collage.

Then there is the grocery list, the list of meals currently in the freezer, and the magnetic clippie holding all the coupons we thought worth saving to see if we could ever use them.

Directly in the middle are two magnetic finger puppets in the likenesses of Karl Marx and Friedrich Nietzsche. They are, I believe, holding hands.

In memory

I see the stained glass, and the afternoon light, and I slow down. This place is not one where I can hurry. I walk past the window that says, in a little scroll at the bottom, "Preaching." Past the one that says "Shepherd." Past the one that says "Healing." Past the one that says "Praying."

The afternoon light shines full through the colours. Jesus Welcoming the Children. This one always reminds me of her. I don't know why, though I think she would have loved it too. No particular reason, no special day, just a reminder.

Light. The sunlight, image of the Light she is seeing, plays upon an image of the Light which, coming into the world, enlightens every man.

May light perpetual shine upon her.

And homeschooling mothers do this ALL day

My first student was learning letters, colours, and numbers. We counted together, and talked about sounds, and put together a picture puzzle, and played a guessing game. She wanted to make a joke and pretend that strawberries were blue. I played along and was shocked.

My last student (three hours later) was learning calculus. We discussed water flowing into a tank at a constant rate but leaking out at an exponentially increasing rate, sprinters covering the same amount of distance when all we had was a graph of each one's velocity changing over time, whether we needed to take a double integral, and how natural logarithms fit into said integral.

Can you say... trying to be flexible? Can you say... exhausted?

Quel convenient!

I find myself at least partially consoled for the long lonely week, early this month, when my husband was on the other side of the country. You see, today he brought home a picture of himself near the Liberty Bell.

Only, the Liberty Bell didn't quite make it into the picture.

The photo shows my husband and the school principal, grinning like tourists, inside a museum-like structure...

...directly under a sign reading "Irreparably Cracked."

Being organised

Have you ever had one of those times where you need to call friends, but don't have their phone number?

So... you call a mutual friend, who doesn't have their phone number either, but directs you to another mutual friend.

But this other mutual friend isn't home, so you go searching on whitepages.com.

And you find one possible entry in the right city, but it only has first initials.

So you decide to call anyway, because the worst thing that could happen is a wrong number.

And it's the right number, and you get ahold of your friends, and then you think... "I'd better write down this number, so I don't have to go looking for it again."

So you flip through your address book, and find the same number already neatly written down in the correct place.

Now tell me truly, hasn't that ever happened to you?

You know you've been tutoring Algebra II too long when...

... you sit at a stoplight, watching a truck make a left turn across the intersection, and think, "Wow, he's describing an exponential function. And the yellow line is the asymptote."

Distinguished guests

I finally read our wedding guest book.

I thought I had read it just after July 22. I apparently hadn't-- at least not thoroughly.

Some entries were standard guest-book entries. These were definitely heartfelt, and made us happy.

many blessings
Congrats!!
We're so happy for you!

Some were creative. These were also heartfelt, and made us laugh.

I'm here (though you knew that)
come work with us in S----!
dude! about time!

There was even one written in Hausa, which I still need to get translated.

Then I got to the end. We appear to have had an incognito wedding guest, though he is not usually the unobtrusive type. The last entry in our guest book reads:

Paul Biya
Congratulations!

Last year and this year: an Easter meditation

I sit where the choir sits, on wooden benches, and sing for the uncontainable joy. Palm fronds wave green and fresh. People around me are dressed in their newest and best in honour of the great feast day. And flowers are everywhere, because flowers are all about hope, and beauty, and... life.

Never mind that last year we sat on rough backless benches, and this year on cushioned pews.
Never mind that last year we sang a rough translation of an English hymn, and this year we sang the Hallelujah chorus.
Never mind that last year, the windows were filled with breeze, insects, and palm fronds, and this year, they were stained glass.

Because He is risen.
And He is risen, indeed.

Let the whole world sing,
Alleluia!

Lenten stories, part II: Why?

My most distinct Lenten memory from last year is the isolation, the constant reminder that I was a stranger in a strange land. My fiance, my family, and my church community were thousands of miles away, and though I was slowly making friends in the village, I often felt useless, laughed at, and practically unable to function in Oroko society. The constant busyness of the year often made it hard for us to set aside "team time" as well, even within our household. The loneliness wasn't constant, nor was it entirely overwhelming-- in fact, I'm sure it was no more than normal for second-year adjustment to a new culture-- but it was there, and it hurt.

I remember pulling out my Bible on Maundy Thursday to reread the story of the Last Supper and Jesus' betrayal and arrest. The disciples all fell asleep while he was praying. "Could you not watch with me one hour?" Then, at sight of the vicious mob, they all left him and ran away. That's when it hit me. On that night, Jesus was alone. It was more real to me than it had ever been before. Knowing my own, infinitesimally small, bit of aloneness, I understood the story better. I even, if one can say such a thing, had a bigger place in my soul for empathy, forging a kinship with Jesus because of some small hint of pain endured. Not always endured patiently... not always endured selflessly... but is there a grace that comes with the fact of endurance anyway? Is that part of what Paul meant when he talked about "the fellowship of his sufferings"?

I somehow found myself not wondering so much if it was all worth it, if anything lasting was going to come of my presence in Bekondo, if I could ever do anything right. There was a grace, if not a salve, in knowing that Jesus had done something in me to bring me closer to him, to change me to make room for knowing him, and that that in itself made the experience worth it-- even if I couldn't see what external difference I was making.

O to know the pow'r of your risen life,
And to know you in your sufferings,
To become like you in your death, my Lord,
So with you to live and never die...