Accidental Adventures

The most beautiful adventures are not the ones we go to seek.

- Robert Louis Stevenson

I suppose I might be a frustrating travel companion, because I like to get lost.  As long as there's no pressing appointment to cloud enjoyment, ending up where you didn't really intend to be, or taking the long way 'round, is often much more interesting.

On a family vacation several years ago, we spent a day in Venice.  My mom took the map from my dad, the Commander, and gave it to me with the task of leading us from the train station to St. Mark's.  I guess she did this because he's not really the stop and smell the roses type, and she didn't want to be marched through Venice.  Also, a lot of the trip had already been spent with my sister and our dad *ahem* debating over the map.  I looked at the map for a few minutes - "yeah we take this turn here - now this way" and then I put it away and started leading us through the city in what I estimated was the general direction of St. Mark's.  We got totally off the main streets, wandered through a lot of small squares and over a lot of little bridges.  I was having a great time.  I'd begged my parents for years to take us to Venice "before it sinks beneath the ocean, pleeeeease!" and here we were, among the quiet and crumbly old buildings, discovering Venice.
I guess I was the only one who thought this was a fun way to travel, because after 30 or 40 minutes of wandering, everyone else realized that I didn't have an actual plan for how to get us to St. Marks, was just "feeling" my way there, and had very little idea of where on the island we actually were.  They took the map away from me with exclamations of annoyance, and in 10 minutes we were in St. Mark's square.
"It's an island," I protested, "we can't really get lost!  Where would we go, the ocean?"

Plan-gone-awry is a familiar theme when you travel.  When I went to Israel (see actual recap here, here, and here) we got lost in Old City Jerusalem on the first night.  That time, it was not my fault and I was not terribly pleased, because we had literally arrived just a few hours earlier and I was exhausted.  Nevertheless, in retrospect I don't regret seeing the back-alleys of the Old City at night.  And nothing says team-bonding like getting lost together.  Later in the trip, in Haifa, we tried to go to the Elijah caves (see 1 Kings 19:9-18).  The taxi driver took us to the Jewish site of the caves, though, and after seeing them we decided we'd also like to see the Christian site, since that was where we'd intended to go.  Several of us thought it would be fun to hike up to the top of the mountain (Mt. Carmel).  It wasn't a long hike, but it was fairly straight up, and over 100 F (38 C).  Pouring with sweat, we stopped halfway and read from 1 Kings, looking out over the Mediterranean.  

The view from Mt. Carmel.  Later we swam in it.  Worth it.

One week ago, my friend took me to nearby Caerphilly, with the intention of having a coffee at a burger shack on the top of the "mountain" there (I put mountain in quotes because while lovely, it's small).  But we missed our bus stop and ended up down the mountain in the town of Caerphilly.  We took a brief look at the castle there, then decided to walk back up the mountain in order to save our bus fare for the return trip.  Like I said, not a big mountain, but it was muddy, and neither of us were prepared for a muddy hike up a mountain, and it took us a good bit longer than anticipated.  It was cool and windy, but we made it to the top, triumphant, and could see all the way back to Cardiff Bay.  When we tried to catch the bus back, we found that the bus stop didn't have a timetable, and as we stood in the fading light on the side of the mountain wondering when the bus would come, it began to rain (something else we hadn't prepared for).

The bus eventually did come, but I guess if we'd gotten off at the right stop in the first place and known when to catch it back, the story of our day would be a lot less interesting.  The same goes for the above stories.  "We went to Venice and it was nice." "We went to Israel and it was nice." "We went to Caerphilly and it was nice."  When plans go awry, stories are born.  Now, the stories of my travel-gone-awry are barely even mildly interesting - they're best in my memory, not in the retelling.  But when I recall the best, funniest, most riveting stories I've heard, from family and from friends, something always goes wrong in order for the climax to come about.  And what about the best books you've read - they'd be pretty boring without a few twists and turns along the way.  "And Frodo rode atop the giant eagle right into Morder, whence he dropped the ring into the fires of Mt. Doom from above, and thus Sauron was defeated."

Of course we don't wish for things to go wrong, or for our paths to be diverted.  In case you haven't noticed, I'm turning this into a metaphor now.  Get it?  Story = life.  Sometimes things don't go the way you plan.  Sometimes things go really wrong, and it's way worse than missing your stop or getting lost in Jerusalem at night.  But sometimes something bigger is at stake than our plans, or our comfort.  Maybe something is to be learned, something is to be done, something is to be changed.  Our adventure is real, and while we may just be in the thick of it now, someday eternal retrospect will help it make sense.  

I dislike coming up with titles

Once you've not blogged for a certain length of time, it's hard to get back into it.  You open a new post, type in a few words, and realize you have (1) nothing to say or (2) too much to say.  What's relevant and important changes the longer you leave your blog untouched.  Usually this is as far as I get.  I read what few words I've written and think "ugh, I don't want to say that"; erase and shut my laptop, wondering what kind of significance my life has if I can't write about it.  (Writing about my life, whether privately in a journal or online in a blog, has for me been a constant method of self-assessment and mental cohesion.  Being unable to draw a narrative or interpretation from what happens to me/what goes on in my head is disconcerting.)
If this post makes it from the draft posts to the blog, it will be a miracle.

I'll try broad and unrelated points.  The storyteller in me will just have to swallow the fact that they're relatively unconnected.

Everybody's all 'oo Ireland is so pretty'. What about Wales?

Wales is, quite simply, beautiful.  It's beautiful when the sun shines but also when it's been raining for days.  It's still odd for me to not be living smack in nature, but I at least have a view of neighbors' gardens from my window and occasionally get of out town to the wilder parts of the country.

Speaking of the neighbors' gardens (see, I'm trying to connect things and make logical segues), I have new neighbors because I moved.  My new house is smaller and farther away from the university, but you could also say it's cozier and encourages more exercise.  It's nearer to some of the international communities and I love walking down the road and hearing so many different languages and smelling a delicious variety of foods.  I often hear Arabic, actually, which only serves to remind me how little of it I remember.

I went home for Christmas, which was wonderfully rejuvenating.  I don't think I realized how run-down I was until I got home to where I was comfortable and familiar and without obligation.  You may hear exciting and glamorous stories of studying abroad or moving abroad, but my immediate experience was that it's not easy and it's not glamorous.  Particularly when you're inexplicably ill for the first three months.  I'm grateful, though, that so far I've been back a month and am currently still healthy (please pray that continues).

I originally began to write here about what all I'm grateful for, but it quickly turned sappy so I erased it.  The reason I don't like to say sappy things is the sappiness - the triteness, the I've-heard-this-kind-of-thing-before - undercuts the huge significance and serious meaning that I'm trying to express.  I'd rather not say something than have you underestimate its huge importance.  Maybe I'm in the wrong, acting that way.

Just know this.  Nothing I have, did I earn.  Nothing I have, do I deserve.  Everything I have, is more beautiful and perfect than my own desires could have created, even when I gripe about it or take it for granted.

I encourage you to examine your own life and see if this is true.

Why am I here?

a picture I took of an oud this summer
before I knew what an oud was

I think it was a little over a year ago that I first learned that Ethnomusicology was a real thing, and something that I could learn.  At that point, I was fairly convinced that I was not going to go to graduate school, and that I was going to stay in Birmingham and try to be a freelance musician.  I was writing my undergraduate thesis, so of course I was fed up with school.  But the idea of ethnomusicology, and the idea of using music for missions, stuck with me, and grew...and thus a year later I find myself working toward an MA in Ethnomusicology.

I feel compelled to mention here that spell check does not even recognize ethnomusicology as a word.  That is because it is a pretentious sounding and made-up word.

I don't really know the details of how I got here, silly as that sounds; when people ask me "What brought you to Cardiff University?  What do you plan to do with that degree?" I feel much the same as when people would ask me "What brought you to Samford University?  What do you plan to do with that [history] degree?"  I could trace the sequence of causation, from one decision to the next, or I could just shrug and say "God only knows," because that's really the best answer I can give.  I could list all the billion ideas I've had for what I want to actually do with my life, or I could say God knows, because I don't.

I had this idea in my head that studying ethnomusicology was going to involve a lot of chilling around playing cool instruments from around the world.  That's not the case (Well, it is at UCLA, but I don't really regret not going there).  There's a lot of reading.  And writing.  And discussion.  And while those are three things that spent 4 years of undergrad honing, I get disillusioned sometimes.  The more academic jargon I swallow, the more people ask me "what are you going to do when you graduate?", the more it seems like all roads lead to PhD (which is not a place I want to be spending the rest of my 20s), the more I wonder what I'm doing here.

I've been asking that question for a couple weeks now.  God, why am I here?  What's the point of this?  I don't feel like I've made a mistake, but I can't see the purpose of it.

After writing two embarrassingly bad papers, I was Googling around with "ethnomusicology" "careers" and "missions."  That's when I stumbled across another pretentiously long word, ethnodoxology, and this quip about it.  Basically, ethnodoxology is ethnomusicology, but for worship music.  That quip led me to the International Council for Ethnodoxologists and, maybe even better, Heart Sounds International, which is a branch of Operation Mobilization that focuses specifically on worship music in other cultures.  I also found the blogs of people using ethnomusicology for missions.

Regardless of what I end up doing when I graduate (if I graduate, sheesh), finding out that there actually is a use for ethnomusicology in missions, that people are actually DOING it, is a huge encouragement.  Heart Sounds has a YouTube channel, on which you can watch recordings they've made of worship songs around the world.  Clicking around on the "related videos," you can find even more.  These videos make me so happy - watch them and try not to smile.

I have no idea where I will be a year from now.  I look forward to the unknown with the excitement of knowing that God's plan will be the best.  I know that what I am learning now can be used for his purposes.  I know that my being here in Cardiff can and will be used for his purposes.  I know it might be a long time before I know what those purposes exactly are, if ever.  I'm okay with that.  I can learn to wait patiently for the sovereign God who loves me.

Weekends and obligatory procrastination

Two of my special skills are:

1) Not taking pictures.

2) Blogging when I should be writing a paper.

Therefore, today I will share with you nearly all of the pictures I took this weekend in Copenhagen, and probably end up ruminating philosophically for a couple of paragraphs before I finally feel so guilty that I stop blogging and go make coffee so I can think about writing my papers.

I'm tempted to think I must be really cool for going to Copenhagen NOT to be a tourist, but to visit my sister - because, I thought, I've been there and done that.  Copenhagen is old news.  Of course, once I was there I realized how little of the city I've actually seen.  I can't totally be blamed for this - my last two visits, it was covered in snow and well below freezing.  This visit was purely a relaxing with family visit, though, and I'm so glad for that.
These pictures are of the botanical gardens, which we walked through on our way from drinking coffee at an American-style pancake house to drink coffee at someone's house.  There are two primary ways I've noticed of dealing with the darkness in Denmark: 1, Drink Coffee.  2, Drink Alcohol.

For some reason, Blogger won't let me put pictures side-by-side.

In the course of a few days, I drank more coffee and beer and ate more chocolate than I have since...well, since the last time I was in Copenhagen!  Although the city is still primarily unfamiliar to me, it was nice to recognize some places, stay with my sister, and feel a little bit like I was experiencing a home-away-from-home, in a weird, everybody's-speaking-Danish kind of way.

Of course, like I mentioned earlier, I am terrible at remembering to take pictures, so, this is it.  I have no pictures of my sister & I, no pictures of the endless cups of coffee and the Christmas beer.  But we did plan a little for a warm-weather trip, because everyone keeps telling me that Denmark is so beautiful in the spring and summer.  We'll see.  It's a short trip over there - the longest part is the coach ride to London.

One final and important thing I learned from my weekend in Denmark is - I'm pretty sure my house is making me sick.  I've had a persistent cough since my second week in Wales, and while I did still cough in Denmark (bringing about lots of big-sisterly worry and affection), I didn't nearly as much as I do here, and then after having been home only a few hours my cough got worse again.  I woke up this morning feeling stuffier & sicker.  I have many complaints about this house, but now I know, it's definitely time to move.  Here's hoping all the houses in Wales aren't dusty and moldy.

Edit:

I have to make an addendum to this post.  I regret to admit that I've lived most of my life oblivious to the greatness of John Coltrane.  That has changed.  Here's a video to rock your world:

I Am Second

Impossible strength

I was on my way to a lecture, feeling overburdened by my thoughts - as I am apt to do - and listening to Gungor.  The song was "Please Be My Strength."  The chorus, in the first part of the song, is:

Please be my strength 

Please be my strength

'Cause I don't have anymore

I don't have anymore

Then, in the latter half, it changes:

I pray your glory shines

In this doubting heart of mine

And all would know that You

You are my strength

You are my strength

You and you alone

You keep bringing me back home

I've probably heard this song a hundred times (in truth - no exaggeration here) and loved it every time.  But for some reason, today, it stopped me - almost literally, on the sidewalk.

God is my strength.

The God who created the world in a breath, who redeemed it and defeated death, who is ultimately sovereign and victorious - HE is my strength.  In ME, small weak insignificant me, is that strength.

It's all over Scripture:

"The Lord is my strength and my song, and he has become my salvation" - Exodus 15:2

"Fear not, for I am with you; be not dismayed, for I am your God; I will strengthen you, I will help you, I will uphold you with my righteous right hand." - Isaiah 41:10

"For this reason I bow my knees before the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth is named, that according to the riches of his glory he may grant you to be strengthened with power through his Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith - that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may have strength to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fullness of God." - Ephesians 3:14-19

(ESV, boldening mine)

These are just 3 places among many - and I couldn't help but include the surrounding verses in the Ephesians 3 passage, because it so wonderfully explains the nature and purpose and power of God's strength in us.

Today I was tired and frustrated; I didn't understand the readings for my lectures and I'm having trouble getting to sleep at night.  I'm still not used to being alone, living in a city, living in a foreign country, feeling stranded.  I've been dwelling on all these things, instead of bowing before the Father, like Paul says in the above passage.  Instead of being rooted and grounded in love.  Instead of being filled with the fullness of God.

 I can be filled with the fullness of God???

C.S. Lewis says in The Weight of Glory:

Indeed, if we consider the unblushing promises of reward and the staggering nature of the rewards promised in the Gospels, it would seem that Our Lord finds our desires, not too strong, but too weak.  We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imaging what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea.  We are far too easily pleased.

I will never in this life comprehend the grace he has given me - he's given me all things! - or be able to properly express the depth of my gratitude.

Long-lost love

Gosh I miss piano so much.

This is how much I miss it:

Photo: Allmusicmaster.com Video: YouTube

Dietrich brings it every time

At about 3:30 PM, it looked like all I was going to do with my day was play guitar in my room and chat with people on the internet.  So, in order to feel like less of a loser, I thought this would be an excellent time to start attempt #3 to read Dietrich Bonhoeffer's The Cost of Discipleship.  I usually make it halfway through the book before I get too distracted or too overwhelmed by the book's intensity, but I really, really want to make it all the way through.
So, here's an excerpt from the second full page of the first chapter:

"Costly grace is the treasure hidden in the field; for the sake of it a man will gladly go and sell all that he has.  It is the pearl of great price to buy which the merchant will sell all his goods.  It is the kingly rule of Christ, for whose sake a man will pluck out the eye which causes him to stumble; it is the call of Jesus Christ at which the disciple leaves his nets and follows him.
Costly grace is the gospel which must be sought again and again, the gift which must be asked for, the door at which a man must knock.

Such grace is costly because it calls us to follow, and it is grace because it calls us to follow Jesus Christ.  It is costly because it costs a man his life, and it is grace because it gives a man the only true life.  It is costly because it condemns sin, and grace because it justifies the sinner.  Above all, it is grace because God did not reckon his Son too dear a price to pay for our life, but delivered him up for us.  Costly grace is the Incarnation of God."

BAM.

Bonhoeffer brings the heat.






Dietrich Bonhoeffer, The Cost of Discipleship, New York: Simon and Shuster (1995), 45.