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.

The whole world is in Cardiff

One of the unexpected happy quirks of my new life in Cardiff has been an almost instantaneous deep saturation of International.
I imagined I'd be hobnobbing with the Brits here, and I've done a bit of that, but what I didn't expect is to be a part of a widespread and varied community of internationals.  Most of my human interaction, apart from cashiers and school administration, has been with other expats.  For instance:

My main professor/academic adviser is Australian
I have 4 Chinese housemates, 1 Hong Kongian (is that a word? I think she'd appreciate it), 1 Kenyan, and 1 Pakistani
One Saturday, I went to Ikea with 13 Hong Kongians
Another Saturday, I went to Llancaiach Fawr with about 20 Chinese, a Nigerian, a Bulgarian, a few Englishmen/women, and a Welshman
This week, I attended a Bible study with 2 Brits, a Slovakian, and a Chinese
On Fridays, I go to an "International Cafe" where I've met and hung out with people from France, Romania, Bulgaria, Poland, China, Slovakia, Ukraine, Nigeria, and Britain

a typical Welsh field by Llancaiach Fawr

Parts of suddenly belonging to an international community were very accidental, such as with my housemates, or meeting so many postgraduate students from China and India (they're all getting MBAs).  But in general I've found myself gravitating to expats and expat-targeted activities.  I think this is because we're all in the same boat (something I wouldn't be able to say around them, because they might not get the idiom), or a similar one at least.  Perhaps also, when you've already been thrown upon a new culture - not that Britain is so different from America - you feel open and thirsty for more new culture.  Well heck, my traditions and cultural mores are already on their heads, so it's not too much of a stretch to delve deeper into the intricacies of human behavior and its variegation across the earth.  I love conversations that go, "We do it like this in my country; what do you do in yours?"  Somehow, being different brings you together.  You find yourself not only wondering why they do it That way in Their country, but why do we do This in Ours?  Suddenly, instead of just learning about someone else's world, you start to learn more about your own.
I often wonder what these expats I meet think of the USA and Americans.  People typically assume I'm British, because I look it, but it doesn't take long for the accent to kick in, and when they ask where I'm from the response usually goes one of two ways.  Either a slightly wide-eyed, ohh, the United States! or a knowing nod, yes of course, the United States.  Like it means something significant to be from the United States.  And then of course they ask me where in the States, but most people don't know where Georgia is.  So when they look confused I say, Do you know where Florida is?  "Oh yes, yes, Florida." "It's right north of there."  "Oh, okay!  So it is very warm and sunny there?"  ".....Sure."
Then, when I tell a Brit I'm from Atlanta, I might get - particularly from the older women - a little sigh, and then they'll say, "Oh, that's a lovely accent;" for any self-respecting Georgian pronounces Atlanta 'Adlanna,' while here they quite carefully say 'At-lahn-tah.'  It makes me wonder what an American accent sounds like.  To me, British accents sound proper, deliberate but in a hurry, and tall; rounded and tumbling if they're Welsh, angular if they're not.
I feel like I should not be considered an international or an expat, because the language here is my native language and I look the same and I come from a culture that functions basically the same.  But I am an expat, because I'm not from here (at least not in the last few hundred years, ancestry is a different story), and when I accidentally give the clerk the wrong coin or fumble with bagging my own groceries, I feel very obviously out of place.  And then, it is very nice to be able to have a cup of tea with a bunch of other expats and laugh about how idioms come out wrong in other languages.

Books and Bays

I am incomprehensibly lazy.  It's fast approaching noon, and I am just finishing my first cup of coffee.  Well, that's what happens when you have a late night...reading.  It's as if I'm trying to make up for all those lost semesters where all I got to read was dissertations on the Puritans or Deconstruction.  First I tearfully finished The Far Pavilions, declaring it an epic to stand next to my top 5 books; then, The Ordinary Princess because I couldn't get enough M.M. Kaye; then, a book I bought on a whim because Amazonians (users of Amazon) reviewed it well - Kingkiller Chronicles is now my new favorite yet-unfinished series; and currently, I'm rereading one of my top 5, Jane Eyre.  I remember Jane Eyre keeping me up late at night last time I read it, but I'm marveling at the fact that I read it when I was 17 and thought I understood it.  Not just the intense vocabulary that makes me so grateful for Kindle's built-in dictionary feature, but the concepts, feelings, themes.  Even now I don't fully understand it, and I imagine it will take several rereads and many more years before I do.  I'm also surprised at the forwardness of Bronte's feminism - not the silly we-can-do-everything-men-can-and-better feminism, but her mental and emotional rebellion against the stifling social mores of an age that saw women as little more than parlor decor.  I think this is why I prefer Charlotte and Emily Bronte over Jane Austen, whose spirited heroines always achieve advantageous marital bliss after wittily navigating social machinations.  I do love Pride and Prejudice,  but in the end it's still 85% social machination.

As far as the move goes - I do a little bit of exploring every day.  Wales is experiencing a freak late summer (temps in the 60s and 70s Fahrenheit) and I only packed fall and winter clothes, so it's been bordering on uncomfortably warm.  If I had shorts, more t-shirts, sandals - it would be divine.  I went on a university-organized trip down the River Taff to Cardiff Bay, which we learned was once a pivotal industrial port, fallen into disrepair, and revitalized in the 1990s and early 2000s by massive community effort.  The result is a spotless, modern water-side area of shopping and arts with a 6-mile trail around the bay.  Remnants of the Industrial Revolution lay in the crannies and off to the side, while the new buildings feel like experiments in modern architecture.  My internet connection is abominably slow, so I'll share pictures later.  Public transportation is a bit pricey, so I still plan on getting a bike.  Soon I hope to explore the wide expanses of Bute Park, which is just a few blocks away.

First days

Queen St, home of street musicians

I don’t have much of a grasp on what Wales or even Cardiff is like yet – it’s only my second full day.  What I have gotten, though, is that the city feels a bit quaint, which makes it less overwhelming.  People are friendlier than I’d expected, and fairly patient when they realize I’m not British.  I feel safe walking around by myself, which I did today.  I wandered down past the castle, and stumbled across a music shop – I should have known it wouldn’t take me long to find one.  Of course I had to go in, to smell the wonderful woody, amber smell that all good music shops have, and gaze at the instruments hanging from the ceiling.  Then I discovered a little Christian bookstore nestled in the corner of an old church, where the shopkeeper kindly told me in a thick brogue that I should come back in two weeks for a 20% student discount.  I didn’t tell him I doubted they’d carry the course books I’ll need; I’ll probably come back anyway.  There’s a huge shopping area near the castle, mostly the kind of stores you’d find in any big European city, but they also have a central market.  Maybe a hundred or so “shops” – they’re stalls, really – line the aisles in a giant two-story atrium.  You can get almost anything imaginable there, from pastries and fresh meat to pets and books and fabric.  It’s like a throwback to the way we used to shop.  You tell the shopkeeper, I want a lightbulb, and he says, What kind? and gets it for you.  You can even haggle, if you’re good at that sort of thing.  The produce is fresh and cheap; in fact, most everything seems cheaper than store value. 

Cardiff Market

I live in a student house with other international postgraduate students, most of whom are from China.  The house is old (and not in the cozy way) and smells like dorm, but I have the biggest room, I think, and a huge window I can open to let the fresh air in – and hear the seagulls!  I’ve never lived by the sea before.  When I arrived, a Welcome box from the school was on my desk, containing junk food and none other than RC Cola from Columbus, Georgia.  I didn’t think anybody outside Columbus actually drank RC Cola anymore!

I’m looking forward to when I’m settled in enough to start setting out, instead of just trying to figure my way around.  I haven’t gotten lost yet, which I credit to a thorough examination of the area using Google Earth, and a natural sense of direction I seem to be blessed to have.  My feet are tired, though, and I want a bike.  Everywhere I need to go is close enough to walk to, but a bike would mean farther adventures.

Last Day

Once again, I'm blogging from the porch, and an early fall hints at campfires, apples, and variegated mountainsides - things I'll miss about good Southern autumns that last through November.  The last two weeks have been lovely, spending sweet time friends & family.  For my birthday we had fresh tomatoes, roasted vegetables, local barbecue, and shrimp & grits, followed by dessert of local peaches and muscadine wine (Blogger doesn't even recognize muscadine as a word).  The perfect late summer Southern dinner, eaten on the screened porch of course.  I spent a weekend in the mountains with an old friend, as previously mentioned, and another weekend in my other home, Birmingham, where everything's changing but my friends are still my family, and we did all my favorite Birmingham things, like bouldering and eating sushi.  I got to play in the worship band one more time, in an amazing service.  All of this, wonderful and perfect, makes me sadder to leave.  But while so much of me wants to stay, I don't feel like I need to, or should.  I still can't believe I'm leaving, let alone leaving tomorrow, but my visa came today and I guess that makes it real?

I can't express how much I'll miss people.  It's time for an adventure, though.

On This Mountain

It's a rainy Labor Day morning, and I'm having my coffee on the screen porch, listening to the water hit the leaves and the whistle of a train a couple miles away.  Does anywhere outside the South love the screen porch like we do, I wonder?  Other regions might use outdoor living spaces more, but I've always thought of the screen porch as a characteristically Southern thing, where you drink your tea or your coffee and socialize and laugh at the skeeters that cain't get atcha.  We love our screen porches so much that we put ceiling fans in them, so when the mercury spikes we can still sit outside with a nice cold glass of sweet tea; forget the fact that there's A/C inside the house.
My granddad used to tell a story about when his parents repainted their farmhouse; his dad was always looking for a good deal on such frivolous things as house color, so he hired industrial painters to spray paint the house for cheap.  Lo and behold, they painted the whole house a shimmering silver, screen porch included.  My grandma would then add a little visual detail to the story, like she was wont to do, recalling that one of the things her father-in-law liked to do while he and Grandma Lily sat on the screen porch was to dip snuff.  He'd spit it off the porch, through the screen, and before long the silver screen turned a rainbow of colors from his snuff.
Our screen porch isn't silver or rainbow; it's cedar and black, but its best feature is that when you're on it you feel like you're in a tree house, because the house is built on a hill and it drops off at such an angle that you're eye level with the squirrel's nests in the trees.

Remember my ramble Hobbits, Koreans, and Courage, about unfamiliar situations and leaving home and going on adventure?  Well, it's happening, although the significance of leaving home is just now starting to sink in.  I've been very nonchalantly telling people of my upcoming move to Wales like it's just across the street, no big deal, but as the distance to my departure shrinks (two weeks and one day), a silent panic grows.  Yes, I am excited. SO excited.  But twelve months is a long time - twelve months without my family, without my friends, without my church home, without screen porches, without barbecue - it began to set in yesterday when I said see you later (later being several months, possibly twelve) to a friend I haven't gone more than a couple months without seeing in about 21 years.  The drive home was a long one, across the upper part of the state, where there are apple farms every few miles, with the low, with the rambling foothills of the Appalachians in view.  Driving near/in/around the mountains is just about my favorite place to drive  - really, the only place where I don't mind driving for more than five minutes.  The drive home somehow morphed into a metaphor for my last American experiences and all the goodbyes I have to make in the next couple weeks, and all the nonchalance I had felt toward moving to another country melted away, leaving a mixture of sadness and nervous anticipation.
But while I am sad, I'm also happy - so don't misunderstand.  I'm moving to Wales!  

Seeds

I never intended to leave a discouraged note as my most recent blog entry for nearly two months.  I don't want to mislead you into thinking that I felt the trip was futile, or that I remain convinced there was no reason for me to be there.  Really, it's quite the OPPOSITE.  I started the trip focusing on my own weaknesses and inabilities, instead of realizing how powerful God is to work through my failings.  Sometimes (most times) it takes me a while to get what God is trying to say to me.

For the next four days of the trip, we had medical clinic every morning and afternoon, in a different location every time.  I want to warn you, dear hearts, that if you ask God to break your heart for what breaks his heart, he will answer that prayer.  My heart was ruined for the people we saw.  And the ruination of my heart only served to sharpen my feelings of helplessness.  We didn't have many translators, so the most conversation I could make while I took vitals was Hello, how are you, please sit, we're done.

I feel I need to pause here and explain that I don't effervesce with affection for others.  At the clinics, I found myself overwhelmed with love for several specific people we treated, and in general for almost everyone we met.  In light of my general disaffection, I know that love did not come from my own nature.  It was and is a painful and precious gift.

Not Mahmoud, but equally sweet

One older woman sticks particularly in my memory.  As I took her blood pressure, she was smiling so warmly that I introduced myself (in shamefully bad Arabic) and asked her name.  Mary, she told me, and thinking of the Marys of the Bible and struck with how lovely and matronly this Mary was, I told her her name was beautiful.  She laughed and, like an affectionate grandmother patted my cheek, saying "La, anti jameela!"  "No, you are beautiful!"  When she came back through to get her medicine from the pharmacists, she immediately stuck her arm in mine, bubbling and laughing and presumably telling me some funny story that I didn't understand in the least.  And I loved her terribly then, and still do, and I still dwell on my inability to tell her why I was there, because Christ loved her, and wonder if she reads the Bible we gave her.  And I think of Mahmoud, a boy of about ten who wandered shyly into the triage room and told us his friend in school was from America, whose eyes lit up in wonder when I let him listen to his own heart with the stethoscope.

This was all a marvelous plot set-up for how God was going to reveal himself.

Midway through the week, I cried out to God to show me that he was there, working, and victorious when I was unable to see the fruit of the seeds we sowed.  I've heard so many reports of mission trips where 30, 40, 100 or more come into the Kingdom.  I wanted to see that fruit, but without seeds there's no harvest.
On the last day, at the last clinic, God gave us a gift.  We were all tired, hot, and suddenly overwhelmed by at least 20 or 30 field laborers who came in at the last half-hour.  We needed to be somewhere, and we only had enough translators for one doctor, and frustrations were mounting.  Most of these men complained of backaches, tooth pain, etc.  One, though, had put on his registration as his symptom: "Unhappy."  In the midst of the chaos, Tommy, my co-triager, realized that here was an opportunity for something beyond physical healing.  He pulled aside the pastor we were working with, and together they took the man, whom we'll call Victor because that's what his name means, to a quiet place to talk.  This is what Tommy told us happened:
Tommy and the pastor asked Victor why he had put that he was unhappy.  Victor replied,
"Nobody loves me."
"Well, I love you!" said Tommy, with the pastor translating and adding,
"I love you, too!  And Jesus loves you."
He didn't divulge the details of the rest of the conversation, and there are some experiences too deep and vulnerable to tell of in print.  But when Victor, Tommy, and the pastor emerged, Victor's face, previously downtrodden, was new.  I don't know how to explain it, but you can see the change when a person chooses Christ.  Buoyant and awed describe it a little bit.  As word got around among the Christ-followers there, the mood turned.  A new brother!  The rest of the day passed in joy, as I remember.  I don't know if the pastor was able to keep in touch with Victor, he said he would try, but it will be hard for Victor, as his coworkers and almost everyone around him will likely disapprove of his faith.

I miss this coastline

Like I said, God ruined my heart.  He ruined it in the best possible way.  I believe that discipleship is a journey, and oftentimes spiritual growth happens in such small steps that we don't notice it until we look behind and see how far God has brought us.  However, I also believe that there are experiences which radically alter the course of your discipleship in a very short amount of time.  I learned so much about faith and trust and God's unstoppable GLORY in that short trip to the Middle East.  As I try to work out what it means to live here like we lived there, in those ten days, I dream of the day I'll be able to go back.  For the second time in the course of a year, God wrecked me for the Middle East.

Matthew 16:24-27
Then Jesus told his disciples, "If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me.  For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will fined it.  For what will it profit a man if he gains the whole world and forfeits his soul?  Or what shall a man give in return for his soul?  For the Son of Man is going to come with his angels in the glory of his Father, and then he will repay each person according to what he has done."