Pumpkins - Carving Better Visions of Community 10-30-9

Hartsfield Airport, Atlanta

Here in the northern hemisphere during October we are enthralled when an outburst of burnt umber, sienna, gold, cadmium orange, and alizarin red erupts across the arboreal canopies of our forests and gardens. Each year I wander around in absolute wonderment at how all these vibrant colors can emerge from emerald green leaves. These autumnal colors remind us of simple delights of life - hot chocolate with marshmallows, pumpkin pie, campfires, hot cider, hayrides, and the companionship of good friends and family. There is a coziness that settles on us almost as an aureate patina, not unlike the sterling one that settles on the world at Christmas.

So powerful are the metaphors of holiday visions. They have resulted in the most stunning examples of community and good will in the most unlikely places on earth. On December 24, 1914 in the gas-filled trenches of European battlefields at the dreaded Western Front, German and Allied soldiers set aside their weapons to enact the legendary Christmas Truce; coming out of their frozen fox- holes, singing carols, exchanging gifts, sharing food, jokes, even athletic contests. Miniature Christmas trees were sent by the German command to the front lines where they were decorated with candles and placed on the parapets of the trenches. No-Man’s Land became a virtual playground on that stunning Christmas Day. Against all odds, community erupted in a venue known only for death and destruction. Alas, the British High Command, under John French issued stern orders against such fraternization. Despite such orders on both sides of the conflict, along some parts of the front, the Truce persisted for months.

As one observer reported, “The war was indeed on again, for the Truce had no hope of being maintained. Despite being wildly reported in Britain and to a lesser extent in Germany, the troops and the populations of both countries were still keen to prosecute the conflict.” Ultimately, 16,543,185 died and 21,228,818 were wounded. Michael Duffy points out “In our age of uncertainty, it comforting to believe, regardless of the real reasoning and motives, that soldiers and officers told to hate, loathe and kill, could still lower their guns and extend the hand of goodwill, peace, love and Christmas cheer.”

A century later we face stunning uncertainties of a kind inconceivable in 1914. A diet of high-tech terrorism, identity theft, the challenges of chronic degenerative disease, scourges of drug addiction, escalating crime rates, and even the fragility of financial systems in a global economy bring insomnia and emotional stress to untold millions. Community and good will seem more elusive in our over-crowded competitive world. In my own small daily world, I see people facing stunning challenges that are every bit the foes once faced across No-Man’s Land; often endured in bleak isolation.

For Christmas to illuminate the Front, it required a soldier with vision willing to take a risk and be the first out of the trenches with an offer of goodwill. For thousands of soldiers in 1914, they experienced the astounding reality that love is far more powerful than entrenched hate. In our era we have the choice to demonstrate that small low-risk actions promoting community can transform the lives of isolated people living out private warfare with massive fear and uncertainty in their daily lives.

Here in the autumn, I can choose to cross the asphalt No-Man’s Land in front of my suburban house and carry a token of goodwill to those who are hidden in fox-holes of fear and distress. In October it seems that pumpkin works especially well for this purpose. Pumpkin? Untold millions of them are grown each year to add to the aureate glow of late October. They are colorful, ubiquitous, free, and functional. Pumpkins make the grandest of whimsical colorful vases for a variety of fall flowers and greens. Setting out in my old Toyota I managed to visit no less than seven houses to make floral deliveries before heading to the airport at midday, leaving flower-filled pumpkins across the county.

At my first stop directly across the asphalt, three dear souls huddle together, each battered by the harsh reality of cancer and long-term illness. From the responses I received, one would think cancer is cured by a diet of flower-filled orange squash. Perhaps the vitamins and minerals abundant in pumpkin can help those at my next stop who struggle with depression, anxiety, and insomnia. Being environmentally conscious, I point out that when the flowers are gone, pumpkins can find new life as a vegetable, soup, or Thanksgiving pie. Six miles away a bed-ridden mute soul struggling with the isolation that comes from living out a terminal neurological nightmare broke into wordless tears when a fifteen pound orb filled with a hundred flowers took over her hospital bed table. Half a mile west a mother and daughter living in the darkness of old age and disability experience a brief respite from their shadows. I get a hug and snacks. Eight miles across the county, a former teacher faces each day from a wheelchair with the immense additional challenges of a stroke at a young age and assorted neurologic challenges. A floral pumpkin netted me a smile and a hot sandwich to eat on my drive to the airport one hundred thirty miles to the west. Two other women struggle with medical nightmares every day, giving each other a sense of safety. Being good cooks, I know this particular pumpkin will find a new calling after life as a flower pot.

A hundred years ago soldiers had a vision for something better than war and came out of their holes. Perhaps the beta-carotene in pumpkin can give us better vision for creating community right around us. Even if you don’t know how to boil water, you can cook up community, especially this time of year. Just find a jack-o-lantern and light up someone’s face with a smile.

Happy holidays!

The Simplest Thing 10-19-9

Anderson, South Carolina

The simplest thing can lead to spectacular life experiences; junk e-mail yielded a grand prize journey of thirty days air travel anywhere in the world for two. From a million offered choices, Britain won hands down. The simplest thing gave rise to the highlight of this spectacular journey; a hand-lettered sign board saying “church open” next to a pot of flowers. Walking by St Mary’s Parish Church in Fishguard on a bright Friday afternoon gave me pause. As one who has been in fifty countries making photographs, this was most unusual to see. So often I find churches locked tight and unwelcoming. I tried the oak door and found it as advertised - unlocked.

From this simplest gesture on the part of St. Mary’s, not only did I ‘harvest’ fine images of the church’s beautiful windows, I was admitted into a radiant fellowship of welcoming people. Initially finding the church empty, I went about my business of photographing the windows. Several engaging members soon came in, watering plants, organizing for a fall festival. In short order I was immersed in true fellowship, moving me from my role of observant tourist to joyful participant. St. Mary’s Parish was suddenly ‘my’ church as well. Dick Russill and his delightful wife invited me to a Harvest Festival dinner and entertainment that evening in the parish hall. I ended up walking five miles to that dinner across steep terrain. It was worth every step of the journey. I was greeted with warm smiles of surprised recognition and embraced with affectionate Christian fellowship, topped up with culinary wonders, plied with amazing tales from church members, and given a lift back to my abode with a bag full of food for my hosts. I was off the tourist grid, the best destination of all.

An invite to Sunday morning activities was equally surprising and truly rewarding. Smiles of recognition greeted me at the unlocked oak door and I was immediately escorted forward to a pew with gracious people, people I was told would be giving me a lift home, parishioners who ended up offering me the highest order of hospitality, giving me lifts over the next several days, sharing their table with me repeatedly, even giving me Internet access a number of times. Most importantly, I found true Christian community in the pew, at table, and even in cars as I was given lifts to assorted distant places.

Going back to ‘my’ new church one day for a few moments of time out I found a simple altar where one could write out prayer requests and pin them up. Something told me that my prayer requests would actually be brought before the Throne of Grace; not left unattended to curl up with the ages. I took a small beach pebble from a bowl to keep in my pocket; reminding me I really do have a church home in a distant land.

I will certainly hold onto memories of that harvest meal and my experiences at St. Mary’s Parish with greater affection than any of the high-profile historical and entertainment venues I visited in the great cities of Europe.

Want to guess where my next overseas holiday is going to be? If I am really lucky, I might be eating at your table and listening to your life stories. Just make sure the door is unlocked.

In Transit to Community 10-12-9

Terminal Five, Heathrow Airport

In 2004 Tom Hanks was featured in a film called “The Terminal”. As one reviewer put it, the film recounts “the hardships of Viktor Navorski, a fictitious Balkan traveler stranded at New York's JFK Airport. His homeland erupts into civil war and his passport becomes void. He can't officially enter the US, but neither can he return to Eastern Europe. So he lives for months in the hermetically sealed microcosm of an airport concourse.”

What is not generally realized is that the film was inspired by the true life account of Mehran Karimi Nasseri, a stateless real-life Iranian refugee who arrived at Paris's Charles de Gaulle Airport in 1988 without a passport and without papers to enter another country. He reported being mugged and having his documents stolen. Nasseri ultimately spent an inconceivable eighteen years of his life in Terminal One at Charles De Gaulle. In 2003 a Mr. Alexis Kouros, an Iranian film maker, suggested “By spending 15 years in that place, he has become institutionalized.” He was quite worried that Mehran's mental health was worsening. In July 2006, Nasseri finally left the airport when he was hospitalized for an unspecified ailment, at which time his encampment in Terminal One was dismantled. In January 2007 he was released from the hospital and has been living in Parisian shelters since, despite having been paid $250,000 in 2003 by Steven Spielberg for rights to his life story.

Because of errors on the part of officials who are supposed to know how to move people around efficiently, I have just spent a night on the floor in Heathrow’s Terminal Five, despite having a paid-for accommodation in the heart of London. One night is certainly not the same as eighteen years but it was powerfully instructive. Having been awarded the grand prize of first class air travel anywhere in the world for thirty days and having slept in a bed under a goose down duvet while soaring above the clouds, being attended to by three meticulous stewards; lying here on the cold marble tiles of Terminal Five and staring at fossilized bubble gum stuck to the bottom of chair seats seems a bit of a come-uppance.

Another long-term traveler, George, spend the better part of four years living here in Heathrow. After years of searching by his mother, he was found accidently by her when she brought a relative here for a flight. He talked with her and eventually to reporters. Like me he was on the Piccadilly Line of the London Underground, a train that ends its run at Heathrow Airport. Unlike me, he had no where to go. I have the world in hand and have no intention of staying here. He decided this terminal could be a destination rather than an intermediate stop. For years it was home. He reports that at anytime there are ten to fifteen homeless people living here in what is considered to be one of the most secure airports in the world.

There is some sort of disquieting quantum physical effect that happens to time when one is enduring long periods of enforced sleepless idleness in airports, or on airplanes for that matter. Time has a way of moving forward at a crawl. I had no conception that ten minutes could seem like ten hours. It would seem that the keepers of the Terminal turn on the air conditioning in the middle of the night in anticipation of the hundred thousand people that will come traipsing through at sunrise with heavy baggage in tow. As the temperature declined during the night, the coldness sucked any enthusiasm I had about seeing the world out of my soul.

Airports are designed to keep people moving, fast. They are not designed for intermediate or long-term stays for the likes of Mehran Nasseri, George, or me. Attempting to sleep in these unpadded chairs with fixed stainless steel arms is a short cut to an orthopedic surgeon for a spinal revision. Bright lights and all manner of denizens of the night operating strippers, waxers, vacuums, and trash haulers do not contribute to a restful night of sleep. I wonder how the hidden residents of this vast terminal find sleep. I finally sought refuge under a strip of five stainless steel chairs, pulling my suitcase up to my backside and putting my head on my laptop computer case.

As I counted accretions of bubble gum, waiting for about five hundred and forty revolutions of the big hand on my little alarm clock to be completed, I wondered about homelessness. I thought about all of those people I have seen sleeping in tattered sleeping bags on the hard stones of the sidewalks of central London, many as refugees from the political or emotional turmoil in their lives; people who live in a state of powerlessness all the time. The police move them on and they accrete in another corner until peeled off the pavement by yet more zealous officials interested in maintaining a tidy image of this grand tourist destination. We can’t risk having homeless people in our photos of Big Ben or Westminster Abbey.

No one has bothered me yet. Perhaps I look too clean and groomed to be considered a true homeless person who might disrupt a tourist’s happy sensibilities. Perhaps I am giving off some subtle aura that says I really do belong here and have my proper paperwork in order and have a country willing to receive me. Perhaps most homeless people don’t carry laptop computers and wear business clothes. Mehran and George both said the key to ‘successful’ long-term habitation in airports stems from blending in; staying tidy and groomed, and keeping a suitcase in hand. I am not interested in testing my ability to persist in this terminal for a long time.

It is 5 AM and an army of fast moving Terminal and airline employees, in a large imposing column, has emerged from the elevators near by. They are heading diagonally from me to one of those electronic doors that reads identity cards. Their sense of urgency suggests a time clock is just on the other side of those doors. These hundreds of people will go about their business of moving tens of thousands of people through my bedroom, such as it is.

The first stirrings of activity can be seen at the ninety-six check-in desks, fast bag-drops, service customer desks, and security zones. I approached several of the desks, revealing my status as the grand prize winner of British Airways big contest, hoping to be admitted into those secret warrens where the privileged can sit in padded chairs, take showers, and do the normal stuff that non-homeless people do everyday. The staff on the desks never heard of the contest. Even pulling out a letter from the CEO of the airline verifying my status was fruitless. The computer did not have my grand prize winner status on record. I wonder how long-term residents in here have learned to work the system. I came back here to my place and counted bubble gum accretions for a couple more hours, glad to know I will get a hot breakfast on the top of the clouds at sunrise. How do these other people scrounge things to eat? Airport food is hideously expensive. I wonder if I would starve if I had to stay in here.

As daunting as it is to lie here on the floor looking up at bubble gum, I know I will get my ticket punched in a couple of hours and be readmitted to that world above the clouds, even if the gate keepers don’t know I am the big prize winner. I get to go home and sleep in my house in my own four-poster bed, read a thousand e-mails wanting to know about my grand journey, listen to myriad inquisitive voice mails, and fill in the inevitable survey from the airline making inquiry about the level of service I have just received here. This should be easy.

But what about all those people heaped in the corners of central London and a thousand thousand other cities? They don’t get to hop on planes today and get free food, liquor, entertainment, a blanket, and a toothbrush to boot. Most of them won’t even have access to a decent washroom. At least here in the airport are many washrooms with clean hot water. As there is for me, there must be an answer for those on the street and those invisibles on indefinite lay-over in here. There is.

Community. What we are all seeking is safe community, a place where we can belong and have our basic needs met. Nasseri fled political chaos in his Iranian homeland, seeking community and safety in a new land. George was fleeing the chaos and burdens of a failed university experience, accumulated debts totaling thousands of dollars, and depression brought on by experimenting with drugs. Curiously, both Nasseri and George found a one-dimensional form of community in the very places where it would be least expected, among other invisibles living here in airports and the staff that come as an army at 5 AM. Befriending restaurant staff, food proved to be abundant at 10 PM when all the eateries close down for the night. Many of the staff in restaurants and maintenance departments are low on the economic ladder and can well understand the economic fragility of homeless living. George reported how those in the same life struggles often help each other out. I saw this everyday among the homeless over in the streets of Central London.

The form of community that George and Nasseri found in airports was substantial, one sustaining them for years, yet one-dimensional. Both were quite resistance to giving up this curious form of institutionalization that provided predictable and safe community. Yet, both these men, and countless others have lost the prime years of life to a meaningless subsistence. They subsisted at the lowest levels of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. Their physiological and safety needs were met, but they never came close to real experiences of love and belonging, esteem, or self-actualization. There simply cannot be much friendship, self-esteem, achievement, respect from others, or creativity in a life given to counting bubble gum deposits and reading cast-off newspapers.

At some point we must face life honestly and ask ourselves where we are going. Asking this question sooner than later can save us from the tragedy of years spent under chairs or huddled in corners, as well as saving us from ending up in the wrong place. George was liberated when he made this journey inward. “Basically, you've got to face everything full on, which is what I didn't do for a long time, and it was only after a while I started realizing that I had to be honest with myself and those people around me. And as a result of that, that was one of the things that helped me sort myself out, because if you just brush everything under the carpet, you're just kind of prolonging it, because you just think that this is a normal way to live, and it's not.”

Ships are designed to leave the harbor and get out of sight of land. Travelers need to leave the air terminal if they want to experience life above the clouds and see the world. The great joy of travelling is seeing new places for the first time. I was granted the opportunity to see the world first class and have seen many glorious cities for the first time, yet none are like one I will one day disembark at.

All of us are going to be called to the ultimate departure lounge; none of us will be exempted. We will go on to see great things if we have checked our final destination. Those of us who sleep under duvets and those of us that live in here under the chairs or outside on the sidewalk downtown are going to get the same final boarding call. No one has ever come back from our final destination but many of us have heard it said that the journey is well worth the ride.

And he carried me away in the Spirit to a great, high mountain, and showed me the holy city Jerusalem coming down out of heaven from God, having the glory of God, its radiance like a most rare jewel, like a jasper, clear as crystal. It had a great, high wall, with twelve gates, and at the gates twelve angels … on the east three gates, on the north three gates, on the south three gates, and on the west three gates. And the wall of the city had twelve foundations … And the one who spoke with me had a measuring rod of gold to measure the city and its gates and walls. The city lies foursquare, its length the same as its width. And he measured the city with his rod, 12,000 stadia. Its length and width and height are equal. He also measured its wall, 144 cubits by human measurement, which is also an angel's measurement. The wall was built of jasper, while the city was pure gold, clear as glass. The foundations of the wall of the city were adorned with every kind of jewel. And the twelve gates were twelve pearls, each of the gates made of a single pearl, and the street of the city was pure gold, transparent as glass. And I saw no temple in the city, for its temple is the Lord God the Almighty and the Lamb. And the city has no need of sun or moon to shine on it, for the glory of God gives it light, and its lamp is the Lamb. By its light will the nations walk, and the kings of the earth will bring their glory into it, and its gates will never be shut by day - and there will be no night there.

The beloved Catholic writer, Henri Nouwen, said, “When we cast off our illusions of immortality we can create the open-ended space in which we can stretch out our arms to our God, who transcends all our expectations, dreams, and desires.” The pre-eminent writer, Paul of Tarsus said, “For I am persuaded, that neither death nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God.”

Jesus of Nazareth spoke directly to the heart of the matter. “Blessed are the poor in spirit: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are they that mourn: for they shall be comforted. Blessed are the meek: for they shall inherit the earth. Blessed are they that hunger and thirst after righteousness: for they shall be filled.” My guess is the guy in the tattered sleeping bag might just get a better deal in the end.

And as one observer put it “Should you be travelling any time soon, please remember to keep your documents safe and spare a thought for the tired-looking traveller catching 40 winks in the lounge. It could be that they've had a longer delay than anticipated.”

We Who Are Many Are One 10-9-9

Caerdydd, Cymru

For the better part of four months now I have been on voyages that have taken me to remote parts of the world containing some of the most beautiful cities and landscapes on earth. In assorted hard drives, flash cards, CDs, and a necklace of thumb drives are ten thousand images of ten centuries of eastern and western civilization in as many nations. It has been my privilege to experience color in unimaginable hues and textures ranging from the awe-inspiring gilded spires of The Cathedral of Spilled Blood in Russia to the bronzed weather-eroded faces of dear friends not seen since the last millennium. In thirty thousand miles one comes upon a lot of exotic images and some that are profoundly ordinary, comforting, and familiar.

One of my favorite things in the world to do is to take church to people; those invisible beings who have become imprisoned in their houses because of physical disability, mental challenges, or the ravages of abject poverty. One of my weekly ‘duties’ in the church is to take communion to our housebound, always making sure the experience is as visual for these parishioners as possible. Years ago I built a communion chest of ancient white oak and filled it with fine objects from my larger outer world. I make it a point for them to see Russian icons, Bavarian crystal, English silver and gold, and fine Irish linen every time we gather to remember the important things in life.

I am out here in this glorious world all the time taking five hundred pictures a day while those under house arrest are often confined to a recliner chair, looking at four walls and perhaps an old grainy TV. A big day for them is staring at the four drab walls of a physician’s waiting room or reading out-of-date Newsweek magazines. I feel a responsibility to bring some of the brilliant color out here into the interiors of their monochromatic worlds. Fortunately, modern computer technology allows me to bring many of these images into the gray world of the home-bound captive.

On one occasion recently I made it a point to carefully photograph the altar at church from the exact position two of our incapacitated parishioners used to view it. Sitting in their former pew I made high resolution images of the altar and the sanctuary. After setting up ‘church’ on the dining table of these dear friends, I arranged the equipment required to project bright colorful images of our church for them to see during the hour we would enjoy fellowship. For people who not so long ago could explore the back country of Alaska, being able to see comforting images of the altar in a beloved church is a big deal when your world has shrunk to neurologists’ exam rooms; neurologists who tell you that you will never get better.

Yesterday afternoon I visited an ancient time-encrusted church nestled in between buildings wherein distant history occurred. This church offered me something truly exotic - the familiar, the ordinary, the numinous. All alone in the sanctuary, illuminated by a ten thousands beams of light in as many hues; ignited by aureate luminosity radiating through ancient windows, I found a chapel altar for those offering intercessory prayer. Those curled scraps of paper pinned up on the altar told me that even ten thousand miles from home, people face exactly the same challenges as those on my own side of the world. Aging, disability, injury, financial ruin, and heart rending relational failures are common denominators in the human experience, ignoring creed and national origins. Suddenly, it didn’t matter where I was. I was home. In a place, no longer remote, I was able conduct my own ‘commerce’ in that chapel, sharing common experience with those that call this ancient place home.

A small bowl of fine smooth beach stones was on that altar. These stones gained their silky beauty by being exposed to the rough and tumble world of erosion for uncounted years. Some of the finest people I know have become silky smooth and gracious in their spirit as a result of their rough and tumble life experiences, often suffering inconceivable losses. Only two days ago I met one of these saints who has suffered through the deaths of two husbands and the catastrophic illness of her daughter, forever consigned to a life of disability. There is a smoothness to this mother’s soul that is the talk of people who know her. I could sense that within seconds of first contact. I now carry a small well worn stone in my pocket that will remind me that I am never very far from home.

As I toss myself into a daunting gauntlet of trains, busses, cars, and airplanes over the next few days, I remind myself that I am going to perhaps the greatest destination of all … church … at my friends’ house. Each time I make the journey to their dining table, the congregation sends me out by proclaiming with me, as I stand at the altar, “We who are many are one, because we share one bread and one cup.”

Home is where the heart is.

Arrival in Community 10-3-9

Carn Gelli, Rhosycaerau

One of the great benefits of living in a specific place for a long time is knowing that encounters with assorted people in various public places are highly likely. How grand it is to have a reunion with a long lost friend in the check-out line at Home Depot. Despite an interval of often very difficult years, I vividly recall a magnificent experience of community with Cindy in ‘Christmas Decorations’ in Sam’s Club one Saturday afternoon. My mission had been to acquire silk poinsettias for a dinner party in the evening. What Cindy gave me that day was Christmas at its very best. The small semi-rural town I call home in South Carolina has been most generous in this respect. Some days will find me in as many as eight homes. Southern hospitality seems to be thriving in some regions despite long-standing draught.

This morning was given to walking along a maritime coastal path, situated along the undulating upper edges of impressive rocky cliffs that cascade about two hundred feet to the waters of the Celtic Sea. At times the journey was at sea level and at others an ascension would bring me up to panoramic vistas five hundred feet above those brooding waters. Good fortune continues for me. Languid air and titillating pools of sunlight dancing across the cliffs provided a bucolic ambience to my mid day-wanderings.

Making journeys in remote places very clearly reduces the probabilities of chance encounters with familiar faces. After weeks alone in a vast city, seeing familiar smiling faces on a station platform was decidedly … exotic. Yet ...

Having been blessed by the One in charge, fine light illuminated pleasing aureate images of an imposing harbor, there for the harvesting. With two cameras I scampered up and down the outcroppings of rock, capturing the sense of a place that has for centuries provided asylum from the often irritable temperament of the gray feisty sea outside this magnificent natural refuge. After enjoying lunch on an ancient cannon barrel, fortified with a new burst of energy, I climbed a very steep path from so-called Cwm Abergwaun into the town that has accreted on the brow of the cliffs over recent centuries.

A small unpretentious stone church appears on the right behind an iron railing, just before one enters the town square. There is nothing square or ordered about this square which is really an organic collection of small serpentine lanes converging at an ancient pub, where centuries ago the French signed a deed of surrender and repented of assorted misdeeds. As so often happens, curiosity beckoned me into another of these ancient time-encrusted churches, interested in seeing what luminosity might still be found within. Passing through a forest of eroded tomb stones, large oak doors yielded to my queries - a good sign. So often fear has locked them tight.

Inside, the sanctuary presented two dozen panels of luminous glass - very fine glass that told an important story in its own way. Not exactly gothic or Victorian, it told me I had come to a place of welcome, of community. Being absolutely alone in the building, these windows proved easy colorful pickings for my cameras. Suddenly, from the fringes of the sanctuary, dozens of potted flowers, very happy festive flowers, presented themselves to dark-adapted eyes for visual consumption. These were not funeral or wedding flowers. Why was the ancient stone font enshrouded in a most glorious outburst of gold, orange, yellow, amber, and russet blooms?

A man came in, soon followed by his attractive wife. The windows were right. A warm welcome and conversation soon had transfigured me from isolated tourist to included seeker. Pleasing conversation with these local diplomats told me that curiosity does pay off. An invitation to a harvest festival dinner and entertainment on the other side of the unsquare square followed. I had been admitted.

Another couple soon wandered into that spectral oasis. Seven trains, several planes, and a long car journey from home, others seeking to know who they are, showed up in this place that knows no strangers; people from the very place I call home on the far side of the water. It is a very small world after all. E-mail will keep it small. Tim and his vivacious wife sought for the kind of knowledge to be found on weathered grave stones. I wandered through the square, knowing dinner was taken care of.

Just after turning the corner to walk five miles back to the ancient hills where I have found radiant hospitality, I encountered the truly exotic … the smiling face of my dear friend Leon. How could I be on the pavements of this small remote town and encounter a smile of recognition? Suddenly, there was nothing remote whatever about this place. A wondrous time ensued in a nearby shop with Leon and his magnificent wife, Sylvia, who I have been in love with since first sight decades ago. I might as well have been in a gilded sedan chair in the grand procession before the Roman games, sitting in Leon’s strong reliable four-wheel Land Rover, being spared that long trek back into the hills. I don’t know if I will ever view a car as quite so ordinary again.

Fortified with this glorious outburst of community, I later found the energy to again traverse those five miles of hills on foot at last light and ascend into a candle-lit fellowship on the square with the natives, enjoying a splendid repast and entertainment with those that have called this place home for centuries. It was as if I was admitted into the long house and given the place of honor. Perhaps best was the enthusiastic smile of recognition from someone who had been a stranger mere hours earlier.

The great British theologian, GK Chesterton, often wondered about the flecks of paradise that would wash up on the shores of his life, overwhelmed and especially curious about those times when he was even granted a second fleck of paradise. And so it was with me. I was granted another one; this time in a Mazda.

The universe really is a friendly place after all; all five miles of it.

Where Are You Going? 9-28-9

Somewhere Between Cardiff and Fishguard

For some weeks now I have noticed that people seem to be desperate to be somewhere else. This is especially obvious in trains. For me, trains have always signified a slow relaxed way to get places, where the journey is as important as the destination. In the late 19th century this was most evident in the lavish decoration prevalent in carriages - fine mahogany and brass fittings were not uncommon. Well furnished dining cars, smoking cars, and sleepers were normative. It seems the role of trains has changed, becoming more like a grounded airline system on rails than anything else, simply a way to get there, wherever ‘there’ happens to be. Tightly scheduled connections have us fretting the clock, just as we do in airports. People simply endure the ride, pre-occupied with being elsewhere, on time.

A long train journey to a botanical paradise is providing an object lesson for this pseudo-cultural anthropologist. There are three Indian men here in the carriage, also two Chinese women, a Scotsman, and the occasional Englishman. None of them are smiling. All of them have mobile phones or ultra-miniature computers in hand and their levels of concentration suggest these devices will soon be transmitting the winning numbers in the greatest Powerball lottery of all time. I wonder how these people will even have enough awareness to get off at their selected stations. An admixture of other uncertain nationalities have insulated themselves from ‘us’ with their iPods. A woman sitting three feet from me gave me the barest of smiles before installing her iPod and powering up her electronic force field. My chance for conversation got deleted. She is now vacantly staring at the wall at the end of the carriage. There is nothing written on it.

There is an amazing absence of conversation of any kind in here. There is one middle-aged man further down the carriage looking around, evidently interested in his environment. He is obviously dressed and outfitted for cross-country hiking. He seems the kind of guy that knows where he is going and wants to see the world along the way. I wish he was sitting closer.

I was riding on a long-distance train from Vienna to Frankfurt to catch a plane. Suddenly the train screeched to an immediate halt out in open countryside. I didn’t know trains could stop so swiftly. Suddenly it became hauntingly apparent that someone did not know where he was going. Impulsively, a young man living in the paradise that is Austria decided my train could take him to a better place. At the optimal moment he threw himself beneath the carriage and his head rolled to a stop outside my window. There we sat in the Austrian countryside for an hour to conduct our own private existential reflections. For sure this would-be traveler found himself in another place. One can debate at length as to whether the train got him to his destination. My guess is it didn’t.

My journey today involves three trains; with razor-tight connections. One involves crossing into another country, yet it allows only seven minutes for everything to work right. It didn’t. Yet another man decided today my train could take him to a better place. It didn’t. In typical Austrian fashion this man ended his pain under the carriage. What had been a single isolated life-experience has become another point in a disturbing trend. No less than twelve people in my own experience have made impulsive dangerous and permanent changes to the itinerary of their lives, two of them by taking the train. They no longer have the option of making changes to their tickets.

Unlike the previous episode, this one made for obvious disruptions in the lives of thousands of people who had their trains cancelled, delayed, and rerouted. Some missed connections taking them to airports for flights. One woman was in despair because a highly coveted job interview in a distant city would be forfeited. Others would be absent from meetings and conferences. I would merely be inconvenienced. Missing that seven minute window would mean waiting for another day to get the train. The botanical wonders would still be there.

Curiously, such an untoward event leads to evanescent flecks of community forming on station platforms. For fifteen minutes several of us strangers commiserated about the existential meaning of our shared experience. We wondered out loud about who was responsible, the culture at large, technology, spiritual vacuums, parents, drugs. We wondered if we would make our connections. We dispersed, saying how nice it was to have chatted. Was it? Mute, we took our places again on several trains, texting, typing, handing three phones as the woman next to me is now doing. I wonder who it is that has need of three phones to stay connected.

On one of the station platforms was a large poster under glass advertising a study course. The poster simply asked, “Does life have meaning?” Three tick boxes below were labeled ‘yes’, ‘no’, and ‘probably’. A website was offered as a place to get answers to this foundational question. Would our two hapless travelers have found there the answers and guidance they needed to make beneficial changes to their tickets?

As I continue on a journey that has given me the option to travel anywhere in the world, I find myself often asking myself why I am going to a given destination. Am I going there because a dear friend will be waiting for me at the gate, because the place contains all of the ancient wonders of the world, because I have never been there, because it is the most photogenic place on earth, because it is exotic, or perhaps because I think it offers true life actualization for me.

Perhaps the greatest struggle many of us have in life is the search for significance, for purpose, for belonging. The great Abraham Maslow gave his life’s work to gaining understanding of what it is that rings our chimes and gets us out of bed in the morning. Certainly, his needs hierarchy has been profoundly helpful to looking at the role of motivation in the human experience. Yet, one can posit that Maslow didn’t go far enough. Perhaps as the Westminster Catechism says, we are primarily to be about the business of knowing our creator and making Him known. Knowing who we are in our Creator just might make it easier to know where we are going.

As I head into another land without money and without a place to stay, wondering if I am even headed the right way, I am reminded of the radiant promise from the One who specializes in helping those who have no idea where they are going in life.

"Don't be worried! Have faith in God and have faith in me. There are many rooms in my Father's house. I wouldn't tell you this, unless it was true. I am going there to prepare a place for each of you. After I have done this, I will come back and take you with me. Then we will be together. You know the way to where I am going."

I don’t think we take the train to get there.

The Lamb’s Book of Life - The Ultimate Naming Opportunity 9-27-9

Bicton, Devon

Many people find a powerful sense of validation from having their names inscribed on walls. Even having one’s name on a small piece of Formica laminate in a slot on an office door is a source of esteem to a lot of us. I have to admit to more than the slightest bit of envy recently when visiting the epic Foreign and Commonwealth Office in London, wondering who these people are that were privileged to have their names put on magnificent doors in grand hallways of this vast neo-classical edifice. There is clearly a difference between those little pieces of plastic that are removed in a second versus magnificent brass castings of names that are securely fastened in place with a dozen screws. We derive a sense of place and significance from having our names written down, especially if they have the appearance of being more permanently attached. Some of the most important finds in all of archeology derive from very large chunks of stone with the names of kings and wanna-bees inscribed on them.

A couple weeks ago I was climbing up inside the vast dome of St. Paul’s Cathedral. There are five hundred and thirty steps from street level to the top of the second largest rotunda in the world; about half of these being in amazingly constricted passageways with very low overhead. Prominent signs at the bottom warn would-be climbers to think twice if they have uncertainties about their health or stamina. There is no turning back once one commits to the ascent. Having once lived in a castle and always being mesmerized by spiral stairs, I happily committed to the climb.

Inside the narrow corridors I was instantly reminded of the confining close quarters one finds on climbing into the inner chambers of many great pyramids. These inner chambers are notoriously hard to get to on steep irregular steps in tiny passageways with a perverse lack of oxygen. The compelling issue is no longer stamina or health; it is the mental wherewithal to fight off a newly emergent case of intense claustrophobia. I was vividly transported in my imagination back to my nether world explorations inside pyramids.

While ascending inside St. Paul’s vast dome, I was entranced with how all the interior surfaces of these passageways are uniformly covered with a million names and dates. People find the wherewithal to fight off their claustrophobia and breathlessness long enough to stop and pull out their ever-ready permanent markers and deface history in their efforts to become part of it. People feel a strong need to let the world know they have been in these secret places. In the spiral stairs of the great tower of the Cologne Cathedral one also finds this same amazing visual montage of a hundred thousand anonymous people wanting to be seen in the eyes of history, even if in reality only in the eyes of tired and weary tourists seeking to have their own moment on top of the world.

Another one of Christopher Wren’s masterpieces is about a mile distant from St. Paul’s. The Monument was built to commemorate one of the great fires that laid waste to the city several hundred years ago. This two-hundred and twenty-two foot spire contains a sublime spiral staircase with three hundred fifty steps. Curiously, the walls do not contain the first name or date on them. They are absolutely devoid of markings of any kind. There were no attendants or graffiti police on that challenging set of stairs to make sure we pseudo-archeologists kept our Sharpies and Marks-a-Lot pens in our pockets. I was intensely curious as to why people write their details on the walls of epic old churches but not on monuments to great fires.

Naming opportunities have become a way to acquire large amounts of money. Corporations and individuals alike seem to crave the opportunities to have their names inscribed on the lentils above entries into imposing academic buildings and stadia of all sorts. People are willing to pay millions to see their names routed into a chunk of stone over a doorway. Fund raisers in many charitable organizations have found people will pay to have their name on just about anything. Even our small community theater has found patrons are willing to pay good money to have their name etched on a small adhesive-backed brass plate which is in turn stuck onto the back of a used auditorium chair given to the theater by the hospital when it gutted its own auditorium. We desperately want to be affiliated in some fashion with something bigger and more durable than ourselves. We want to create a sense of significance for ourselves; believing people who have their names inscribed on the world and its attachments must count for something. We struggle with our own sense of impermanence and smallness; even becoming indiscriminate about where we leave our names.

On the periphery of the splendid Italian gardens at Bicton is an old parish church; long in disuse. Tourists to the garden wander into it out of curiosity, as did I. In front of the tower of this old church are the older remains of an even smaller chapel; the empty gothic window mullions vaguely reminiscent of the windows left standing after the destruction of Coventry during World War II. A long neglected cemetery contains ancient slab tombstones with nearly obliterated names and dates. One barely legible stone contains the exact same first and last names as the man of the house where I am taking residence. Another stone contains the same family name as my friend, Tony. The existential questions regarding death, significant, and immortality took on a slightly enhanced urgency.

These names, once etched into stone, legible and enduring, are now barely detectable in the rough surface of broken tombstones in the overgrown church yard of a long disused church. Certainly the names scratched onto the interior walls of old church buildings with pen, pencil, chalk, and marker are at risk for being erased, if not by centuries of erosion, then in a few seconds when a painter runs a roller full of fresh paint over them.

Even the grandest structures in the world eventually disintegrate and are lost. The magnificent polished marble faces of the pyramids were long ago looted. The Sistine Chapel is being eaten away by acid rain and smog. Earthquakes did to ancient wonders of the world in seconds what thirty centuries of time failed to do. Developers tear down magnificent structures in the name of economic expediency. Entire cities are lost to the insanity of war. Lots of names go away.

The Revelation of John describes a heavenly city where names of the apostles and tribes of Israel are written on the foundations and walls. There is nothing to suggest looting, acid rain, earthquakes, developers, or war are ever going to compromises these walls and foundations. The names will be there for all to read for all time.

Recent acquaintances have been spending several days digging around in old parish records in the Devon Records Office. They have found evidence of land ownership, marriages, death, and even involvement in the life of the church. What my new friends did not find is anything about the fate of these people. Were their lives as temporal and evanescent as the faded ink on moldy record books?

Even more compelling is the recording of our names in the ultimate parish record - The Lamb’s Book of Life, the book that grants to all those inscribed therein a place of residence in that celestial city where “death shall be no more; neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain, any more: the first things are passed away.” Perhaps we need to come out of the dark passageways and put our markers away and allow the One who writes with indelible ink to inscribe our names in a place where all eternity will not obliterate our names. Where I seek to have my name inscribed is an all important decision.

Make sure your good name isn’t graffiti on the world, rather an entry in the ultimate guest book of all time.

The Best Place for Trust 9-24-9

Woodbarton House, Devon 9-24-9

For many years I have wondered in idle moments what would happen if access to my lines of credit and banking accounts was suddenly cut off while traveling overseas. It never really concerned me, as this never happened … until just now. Casually, an attempt to get cash out of an ATM failed. With increasing levels of agitation, my efforts at a number of ATMs have proved futile. The screens consistently tell me, “This service is temporarily unavailable.” This card worked just fine in seven countries a few weeks ago. What gives? I have started to wonder how this is going to work out if I end up in a place with no local language skills and no one willing to let me borrow their debit card. Getting off the tourist grid and into the real world requires getting off credit and using local currencies. Apparently, it also requires a level of trust I am very short on. Images of al fresco sleeping and extended periods of religious fasting are suddenly a good bit more believable. I wonder what hypothermia and hypoglycemia are really like when experienced concurrently.

A visit to a local bank was of no help, only confirming that an opportunity to learn how to operate without money a very long ways from home is forthcoming. The bank people mumbled something about PIN chip technology now being embedded in debit cards to prevent fraud. The recent bankruptcy of my bank’s holding company might also figure into the equation somehow. In name, my bank doe not exist anymore. Someone here in the banking system must have been surfing the Internet and doctored the bank authentication codes that allow ATM’s to dispense portraits of the Queen.

For several months before commencing this world journey, I accumulated funds in my checking account so I would be able to lubricate whatever situations I might find myself in. Suddenly, immediate recall of the Jewish experience in the Sinai desert comes to mind. When they attempted to accumulate manna for a rainy day, they found it spoiled overnight and became infested with worms. The Jews had been told in no uncertain terms to trust God for their needs each day and to punt the hording model of capital conservation. Here thirty centuries later, my plans for world-wide self-sufficiency seem to have been ablated and opportunities for learning to trust in the good will of others and the provisions of the One who got me here in the first place, under a down duvet in the clouds yet, are going to abound.

My good friend Tony has agreed to cast his fiscal future to the winds and he went to an ATM today and withdrew enough funds to pay for my bed for five days. I wrote him a check on my apparently non-existent bank. Don’t ask me why I brought my checkbook to the other side of the planet. It just seemed like a good idea at the time; Providence, perhaps. I will eventually make good with Tony.

At the end of five days I am supposed to leave England, using pre-paid tickets, to go to my next destination without money and without a place to stay. To be totally accurate I do have money. There is a $5 bill and three $1 bills in my passport. I also found a coin on the ground today that is worth $1.59 to $1.66 depending on recent spot brokerage rates for assorted currencies. This is feeling a bit like being on a high ropes course without the high ropes or the safety clips.

It is hard to let go of contingency planning and hording thinking. Already I have figured out that the coin I found in the station will buy me ten packets of a generic Chinese noodle with a ‘special flavoring packet.’ I figure I can have a large, actually a rather vast gluttonous, English breakfast for the upcoming five days and then one of those packets at mid-afternoon and early evening to head off the inevitable rebound hypoglycemia that derives from morning gluttony. I might even be able to swap my portraits of dead American presidents for something to eat on days six and seven, if people in another land are feeling good about US dollars and the American economic prospects on those two days. Like weather forecasts, beyond a five-day time horizon there is no meaningful predicting what will happen.

It makes no sense for me to put my trust in banks that can disappear overnight. I have sudden recall of the imperative that reminds me, “No man can serve two masters; for either he will hate the one, and love the other; or else he will hold to one, and despise the other. Ye cannot serve God and mammon”. What I hope to learn at a deep visceral level is that the One who miraculously healed my leg in August, the one Who granted me first class travel anywhere in the world, the one that moved a common thief to return something precious to me, the one Who created this magnificent world for us to enjoy, is going to continue to prove to me, “I know the thoughts I have for you, thoughts for good, not for evil, and a plan that will give you hope and a future.”

I’ve just been asked to join the natives for dinner. I’m on it.

Community - When the Ordinary Becomes New and Exotic 9-23-9

A Southwest Train near Salisbury

One of the great joys of travel is seeing ancient medieval buildings, bustling cities, marvels of engineering, and epic landscapes for the first time. There is a powerful sense of wonderment and enchantment that occurs only during these initial encounters. Perhaps this derives from coming to these new places loaded with a positive expectancy. Many of us will be forever travelling to new destinations, simply because we want to immerse ourselves in a place for the first time; over and over. There is some kind of delightful intoxication that comes from experience of the unfamiliar, novel, and exotic.

Arriving by ship in an unexplored city has to be one of the preeminent ways to experience this enthralling, even heady expectancy of something new. Many times this year I spent the evening before arriving in a port musing over a city map and wondering what treasures were within an hour’s walk of the docks. Speculation over what a foreign capital looks and feels like is a most delightful form of free imagination. Never once have I been disappointed in visits to fifty nations. The hundreds of cities I have been in are each an amazing self-contained universe with its own customs, landscapes, cultures, and histories.

Climbing the Eiffel Tower, taking off in a jet at sunrise, watching a volcano erupting at night and spewing glowing red lava down the slopes, traversing a glacier field on horseback, observing a missile launch, riding in a hot air balloon, wandering into St Stephan’s Cathedral in Vienna, circumnavigating the globe. These are all truly stupendous life events that were near epiphanies for me, yet I can never do them again for the first time. A sound byte from popular culture fairly well captures the sentiment that often drives us to the next thing, ‘Been there, done that, got the T-shirt”, implying that returning to a prior experience would be tepid, lukewarm, or watered down. There might be a bit of truth to this.

I recall making my maiden voyage through the Panama Canal in 1998. It had to be the most magical thing in the world to me; I could not get enough of it. Alas, after eight journeys through the canal, it became familiar, normal, and even a bit ordinary. After all it is just a big ditch filled in with water so that freighters can save huge amounts of time and money by avoiding long transits around South America. Or is it? Nothing about the Panama Canal changed during my series of visits. Only my role had changed - going as an enthusiast explorer during my first passage through the Gatung Locks and as a slightly jaded photographer my last journey; wondering what the Canal Authority did with all of the draconian tolls charged to my ship and hundreds of others like it. Perhaps I had come to know too much and had lost the innocence of childlike enchantment.

Recently, while roaming the winding medieval streets of Tallinn in Estonia I came upon an incredible structure that left me gawking like the accidental tourist I was. In front of me was the onion-domed wonder of the Nevsky Orthodox Cathedral. This sumptuous gilded and ornamented monument to creative genius had me spellbound. In its ornate, lavishly furnished interior I was able to instantly transition from tourist to pilgrim, able to immerse myself in what was nearly a numinous encounter. Yet, incredibly, the local residents consider this epic Cathedral to be an absolutely ordinary building with no meaningful history and hardly worthy of comment. The building is after all, only one hundred twenty years old in a town dating from the early 12th century. The locals have had one hundred twenty years to get used to the place. I had less than one hundred twenty minutes. It seemed that familiarity had rendered the exotic ordinary.

For ten days now I have been on an amazing journey to visit the world, granted by British Airways as the ultimate prize for an essay contest. I’ve been immersed in inconceivably grand experiences and have met some truly impressive and inspiring people. I’ve also eaten a lot of meals by myself. What I have not experienced since getting into my car to make a hurried journey to the first of many airports is hearing my name called out from the other side of the street, seeing a familiar face for the first time in a very long time, getting a smile of recognition, being asked for a hug.

Being alone in a vast city of twelve million for many days can present a certain kind of challenge. One is in very close physical proximity to all of these people, even touching in crowded subways and public venues, yet a vast chasm exists between we mutual strangers. There is a contented solitude one can experience in these times, but there remains risk for devolving into self pity and loneliness. Vigilance as to one’s true good fortune is imperative.

Having just embarked on a four-hour train ride to see something old and very familiar, it seems my real journey has just now begun; a journey back in time. After this pleasant time of contemplation in the English countryside I will alight onto a platform in a small village where I will hear my name called out from the other side of the street, see a familiar face for the first time in a very long time, get a smile of recognition, be asked for a hug. On that platform will be two good friends who are there simply because I am there, ones I have not seen in years. The concept of two dear friends waiting for me on that platform is simply … exotic.

Truly, one of the greatest joys in life is coming home, hearing my name called out from the other side of the street, seeing a familiar face for the first time in a very long time, getting a smile of recognition, being asked for a hug. Home just might be the most exotic place on earth. Just open your front door and look out. You might see true color for the first time. Just ask Dorothy and Toto.