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.

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.