Jonesberries

It has been stormy this last week, in Turkey. Severe gales of winds and just as you think the sun will come out you get pelted with rain.

The bluest seas come with the storm. They are already a beautiful blue and transparent. It is easy to get mesmerized watching a small squid or the flying fish skimming across the top. It is the storms, however that stir up the bed of the seas and make it all an opaque turquoise.

Quite beautiful.

Quite poetic as well that such striking beauty comes from a storm.

As we drove along the coast I was reminded of when I was a teenager. Being young and naive and thinking I knew quite a bit about the world I had never seen I would spout out foolishness with confidence. Those words come back to me from time to time.

I remember seeing a photo of an opaque turqoise sea. I spouted with confidence. “I know that photo is doctored because it is impossible for the ocean or sea to be that colour.” My knowledge of the colour of seas being limited to the muddy brown waters of my particular part of the New Jersey coast. I now know better. I wonder what else I was wrong about. What foolish things I still say out of ignorance.

We enjoy a nice shower more than you.

Well, probably.

You see, this is my theory. In an age of instant gratification we rob ourselves of the ecstatic joy of receiving something we have done without. Something we have dreamed about and waited for.

Let me explain it better.

Have you ever been so tired that when you finally get to bed, put your head on that nice squishy pillow and pull those warm covers up that you laugh for the sheer joy of finally being able to lie down. Well, if you never get to that point of fatigue, that wanting but not receiving, waiting then your bed is the expected outcome at the end of the day, no joy.

Kind of like a shower at the beginning of the day. Normal occurance for most, eh. Showers are not a regular, daily experience for us. Last week we had gone a week + without a shower. I know, yuck!  We were driving and parking at rest areas for the night, wild camping at the Black sea coast, parking at an abandoned gas station. It was hot, we were sweaty, the only thing worse than the other person’s aroma was your own. We could jump into the sea but my hair still felt like it was made of cardboard. Then, Andrew found a cheap, old school, post-communist camping ground. First question. Do you have showers? Second Question. Are they warm? I opened up the wobbly door and went into the pink, cement room. When I turned the water on a gentle trickle of warm water came out of the nozzle. Sheer bliss, heaven in a gentle stream of water. Aaaaaah! Has there ever been something so beautiful, ever. After the shower it took me a while to come down from the euphoria. I sat back on some cushions at our camping site. When my hair dried I couldn’t stop running my fingers through it. No longer was I feeling a lump of straw on the top of my head. I was feeling silk.

When you live in a non-instant-gratification world you get to enjoy the world that much more. The euphoria of a shower, a bed, a sit-down toilet, a sofa….

On a beautiful Saturday morning. The first glimpse of blue sky since our arrival. I sit at the long table in the bar of a beautiful old german castle in the idyllic countryside. This castle is the home of a multicultural community. Some of the members are friends. Some of the visitors are also friends. We are here to make more friends and deepen those that we already have.

My family is dispersed around the globe right now so I have lots of time to think.

Sam, Lizzy and Abi are all in Orkney with friends. A trip that Abi organized and found great travel deals for all. Lizzy is starting her correspondence school from New Zealand while there. Not the greatest timing. I think New Zealand school will be good for her. A lot more relaxed. They are all so clever (proud mama sigh).

Dad is on his way to join them. He left for Koln yesterday. Sharing the driving with an ill driver/traveler/biker/philosopher/friend who was on his way to help some members of a rock band with scheduling issues. From Koln Andrew will fly to Aberdeen and then take the ferry to Orkney. He is on his way to sort through some things we had left behind in a space that will be sold.

That just leaves me, Hannah and TJ. The girls rush off each morning to play with a fellow tck (third culture kid). He arrives promptly at 8:30 each morning. Oops, I better go wake up TJ so she is ready.

Thinking about the community in the castle. Thinking about the different cultures here. Thinking about other communities and individuals we have been with. What are the similarities. What are the differences. Thinking about my birthday party and the conversations when 2 completely opposite individuals get together.

So, what happens when you take an american hippie who has lived in a self-build bus or old american rv for 10 years and never stayed at a campground and you put him in the same space as a german/swiss man who lives in a new house and has never taken his factory build vw campervan out without staying in a campground. You get very interesting conversations, changing paradigms and a smile on Debbie’s face when I wake up in the morning.

This is the rubbing of shoulders. The wearing down of rough edges. This is a broadening of our worldview that helps us feel alive. Sometimes it is fun. Sometimes painful. Sometimes we laugh through our pain. Sometimes we cry. Always, we are changed.

Thinking about the good and bad that individuals carry. The good and bad that cultures carry. It seems strange but poetic that our greatest strengths share the room of our greatest shortcomings. Cultures that carry strength can become intolerant of weakness in others.  Cultures that carry beauty can become hedonistic and soft. What about easy-going?  Does that share the room with laziness? Does promiscuity share the room with love? What about my culture/cultures? Easier to see other cultures than your own.

Makes me think. What helps us swing to the good side of our culture? Our country cultures. Our personal cultures. What swings us to the bad?

I have time to think this morning. My family is dispersed around the world. They are rubbing shoulders with other cultures. Learning and growing. Laughing and crying. Broadening their worldview. Time for another proud mama sigh.

Woke up this morning to the sound of rain on the side of the truck. It was 6:15 and Lizzy wanted to go for a run. She carefully considered an alternate route, donned her raincoat and climbed out the door. Moments later Abi woke up to do her morning yoga. She chose Lizzy’s bed (has more headroom than her own) instead of the roof of the truck before beginning her sun salutations.

I thought about my plans for the day. Good thing we got our shopping done yesterday. Lizzy is midway through her 12 week art course that required a week of fasting from movies or reading. Since we live in a single room we joined her for the movie fasting. She breaks her fast today. A rainy day is a great day for watching a movie, or two. I could use the excuse of a rainy day for avoiding doing the laundry.  Well, I could use the opportunity to wash my clothes in fresh rainwater instead of creek water but the clothes wouldn’t dry outside. I could also assemble and try out my new collapsible drying rack.

Thinking about rainy days. Of choosing an opportunity rather than an excuse in a less than desirable situation.

Like an outdoor picnic in the rain

Taking a canoe grocery shopping when the road is too dangerous.

Finding old friends on the way back from the emergency room.

Creating a-mini paradise in the middle of a pile of discarded tyres while waiting for truck repairs.

Creating a new path where the old one is broken.

Realizing that some of our best family memories are when we are confronted with difficulties that encourage excuses and find the opportunities instead.

Mistakes – we have made a few. Here are some of our most memorable ones over the last couple of years:

1. While learning to use our GPS we followed its directions into the middle of an ancient Portuguese town on Easter Sunday, at the same time that all the old people were coming out of mass, until the streets got so small we had to back all the way out of the town.

2. We had to build our back bench 3 times because we used too thin of wood.

3. We paid 68 euros for one nights camping in Spain when there was a place for 25 euros one block away just because we drove into the first campground before we knew the price.

4. We installed cheap particle board shelves that literally fell off  the walls.

5. While we were driving, games, small books, suntan lotion, etc. flew off of our shelves, onto our heads, because we thought bungie cords would hold it all on the shelf.

6. Because we did not have our papers together for the Albania/Macedonia border, we were turned away and had to take a detour through Greece that got us there almost a full day later.

7. We overcompensated by giving too many papers in our packet for the  Macedonia/Serbia border and confused the border official.

8. We did not have enough cash in Euros or USD at the Serbian border to pay the insurance and had to drive to the nearest bank machine, 20 minutes away, while our passports were held at the border.

9. We left our camera on the dash, in Serbia, and almost got it stolen by some “window cleaners”.

10. We unfortunately created a moisture bridge by screwing metal screws into a metal framework .

11. We paid too much money for an awesome “Lawrence of Arabia” outfit and some pieces of jewelery, in the Sahara, because we didn’t know what it was worth and we trusted the salesman simply because he hosted us in his camel hair tent.

12. We sent one of our young people to the UK while assuming she had a bank card. She had none and was sent back to us in Africa after being handcuffed and spending 4 days in a detainment facility.

13. Elizabeth got locked in a self-clean toilet, in France, during the cleaning cycle because she pushed the door button too many times.

14. Elizabeth got locked in a self-clean toilet, in Spain, during the cleaning cycle because she pushed the door button too many times.

15. We connected our Solar panels the wrong way many, many times and had to pull out the ceiling and insulation in the front ceiling before we got it right.

16. Andrew almost drowned when he went out to save Hannah, who was being pulled out of sight on her boogie board. When he went out without a board and spent 45 minutes fighting the waves before being brought in by the same rip tide that pulled Hannah out.

17. We overloaded our bike carrier until it sagged and had to be propped up.

18. We bought a chemical toilet. Andrew thinks this is a good idea. I think it was a mistake because we are rarely allowed to use it as it is too difficult to find a place to empty it when we are wild camping.

19. We bought a cheap and cheerful umbrella chair for each member of the family before we realized they each had about a 2 week lifespan.

20. We put 2 giggly girls in the navigation seat at a crucial juncture and ended up driving through the Rif mountains and getting chased by drug dealers.

With all the mistakes that we have made we are only really fools when we don’t learn from them.

My old pottery teacher, Andrew Appleby, gave me these wise words:

There is only one way to avoid making mistakes:

Don’t try anything new!

Now that is no life at all, is it?

This post is part of the FOTR Blog Carnival.

Spending time with a fellow nurse these days. Not only is she a nurse but she works in “homecare”. She works with the dying elderly and I used to work with dying children, both in the home.

When you have something like that in common it frequently flavours the conversation. There are places you can go, joys you can speak of, grief you can process, things that you see and know that are quietly forbidden in conversations with most of the world’s population.

This morning I am remembering a house I went to many years ago. Death was coming to this household. The death of a 6 year old boy. He was an active boy until cancer took control of his remaining days. In a brave decision that brought on a flood of judgement his parents decided to bring the boy home for a quiet passing with family in his few remaining days. They rejected brave attempts of hopeless heroism that they saw as violent. With outsiders screaming and judging, they took him home.

I was taking care to include the expression while sleeping, the kiss of a little sister and the caress of a mother’s hand in my nurses notes. I knew they wanted to keep these notes as a reminder of his final days.

The final night I was there at this house, the boy’s mother would keep calling relatives and close friends.”I think that this is his final night,” she would say. Over and over again.

The father sat by me and moaned.

“Why must she do that? Why can’t she just stay quiet?”

I wondered at this myself. Then I realized that these small declarations were, in some strange way, healing her. In nurse talk we say, “it was therapeutic”. She was processing her grief externally. It is strange many times it is the introvert that becomes an external processor in times of extreme grief. The extrovert becomes an internal processor. We go outside our norm to try to find deep healing.

Grief is experienced for many reasons. Sometimes the death is that of a healthy self, or an ideal, a symbol of success, a lifestyle or a relationship.

Grief is never comfortable. We fight it all the way. “Why can’t things just go back to the same way.”   The other grievers can become uncomfortable with the amount of personal, relational and family secrets that are being exposed in such times. Is death ever comfortable? Is life ever perfect?

If we truly love we need to allow others to fill up the room with their painful honesty or to hide in a corner. We are all unique. We are all beautiful. We all make mistakes. We all get our turn to grieve.

We need to allow those we love to heal in their own way. To allow them to find a way their best way to heal, even if it makes us terribly uncomfortable and we would do it completely different.

Thinking alot about helping and being and doing. I want to help people out of the depth of who I am not just the superficiality of what I can do. Especially if what I do has its main value in helping me feel better about myself.

Going to Christchurch after the earthquake was quite a shock to my system. Andrew did some important networking stuff but what did I DO! I looked for opportunities to shovel something or clean something but couldn’t find where to go. There was a shortage of skilled workers. More structural engineers to lead teams into areas where there might be someone trapped and clinging to life. What about the menial labour jobs.

I had this strange sense that people somehow resented outsiders coming in and doing these menial jobs. They kept telling teams of people, “don’t come”. Why? I am still processing this all but this is where I am now.

I think the Christchurch people may need those menial jobs themselves to heal. Standing side-by-side with someone who has seen their house shake like a tender leaf on a tree. Side-by-side with someone who has traded stability for chaos. Someone else with a shattered story. To pick up a shovel next to them would have been violating a holy space.

As I look back on our time there I think I know the best thing that I had done. Listen to stories. Stories of heroes and survivors. Listen until the focus goes off of me and my heroic efforts and over to where it should go, the one with the story.

By listening I  would validate and serve and witness. By listening I would reconnect people with their humanity. With their connection to their neighbour and their land. To place them in time and space and reality. To shift the focus to them. To lift them up. To applaud with my ears and my eyes and my heart.

In a world where fairness and reason and security seems in short supply. In a world where a new disaster comes in the shadow of the last. Perhaps there is some value in that.

We help where we can. We listen. We witness. We validate. We love. We walk in shadows.

It is early Christmas morning. I am the only one awake. We have been having such a great time with my family. The month has just raced by. You know, we haven’t gone back home for Christmas in America for 10 years. The last time the kids have been back was about 5 years ago. Yeah, I know, we should come back more.

So, I watched the sun come up, laying on the floor with my family in my dad’s study. Thinking about the talks, family dynamics and the individuals. We are quite a diverse lot. I am the oldest of 4 kids. We have gone on to collectively bring 16 grandkids into the family. I want to go off into multiple tangents of wonderful and serendipidus experiences at this point but I am determined to stay on target so I can get breakfast started.

This is my thought.

At these family gathering points we contemplate family history.

We laugh and play.

We reminise and cry.

We give and receive lots of hugs and kisses.

At least in my family.

Inevitably skeletons come out to play with us. You know those skeletons most families keep shoved in the closet. Well, ours seem to like to come out and dance on the table. Some seem scandalous to us and we have a childlike giggle. We like to think of it as a knowing smirk but it always becomes a childlike giggle.

Some skeletons make us want to cry. Some make us angry.

It is the angry part that woke me up early this Christmas morning. We have a choice you know.

One of the biggest wounds in our family happened about 25 years ago. We have talked in detail about where we were and how we have reacted. The wounds still seem so fresh.

If we allow the anger to continually visit the fountain of youth we give it power over us. Power to control our lives and our destiny.

The deal is, if we are completely honest, we get angry because love has made us vulnerable.

I choose love and a life of trying to live in that love rather than to live a life of bitterness and anger.

I have been thinking a lot lately but unable to formulate my thoughts into any flowing paragraph or post but my thoughts are hounding me, asking for a place to sit.

Here is such a place.

A place for my random thoughts.

Some require something of me but I am not sure what.

Others simply require a place to be.

….

I used to like old movies.

Doris Day etc.

They now disturb me.

Was I being manipulated into thinking being drunk was cute.

All was well with a man if he wanted to marry me – even if he was a jerk (pillow talk etc).

The accumulation of perfect clothes was great and to be taken for granted.

Do I want my girls filling their heads with such nonsense.

What are the new movies trying to show me?

Are the movies telling us where we have been, where we are or telling us where to go?

…

I just finished reading a disturbing book called “the other hand”.

It is a work of fiction based on fact about the detainment centres in U.K. and the effect of the oil industry on Nigeria.

Sounds a lot like what is going on in Burma with the oil industry.

Is the oil industry bad?

What about gold and rare gems?

Should I stop cooking with gas.

Should we be traveling the world gas free with horse and cart and wood for cooking.

That would make us even weirder.

Or if it wasn’t about the oil or gold or gems would it be about something else?

What can I do?

Lots of people will just zone out when they get too much info about pain and injustice in the world.

Does that make them shallow?

Or is that a coping mechanism?

Could you go crazy thinking about all the injustice in the world.

What about the Romany being kicked out of France.

Is it like the EU chief says, “This is a situation that I had thought Europe would not have to witness again after the Second World War“.

Perhaps the most disturbing part of the “EU article” is in the comments for it, that are now closed.

I have been hanging out with people I previously thought were full of drug addiction and dependent on the government.

My preconceived ideas were wrong.

Why are people scared of them?

Lots of people don’t want to think about sad things like this.

What is my role with difficult truth.

How should it affect the way I live my life?

I met someone who was afraid of raw chicken.

There are fast food restaurants everywhere in America but where are the grocery stores.

Are lots of people afraid of raw food and that is why they eat out at restaurants.

Is that why I can’t find a grocery store?

Is that part of the obesity problem – a fear of raw chicken driving people to fast food restaurants?

Shouldn’t it be the other way around?

How much has advertising and movies had a role to play in all this.

There are lots of people afraid of germs today.

Are we becoming a weak people.

So many of the women in movies are weird control freaks afraid of everything.

The moving, talking advertisements really disturb me.

So much advertising.

So much fear.

Is it a planned attempt to keep us tame?

So many people have excuses for not living life.

So much fear.

I met a man who’s 2 year old daughter has 75 pairs of shoes.

Dang.

Is that why I can find lots of clothes stores and car lots and no grocery stores.

Is our fear misplaced?

Are we being taught to fear the needy?

As far as how to apply these in my own life.

These questions will need to linger as questions for now as I don’t know how to answer them in a way that makes sense.

I refuse to diminish them by answering them too quickly.

Am I asking the right questions?

We have been hanging with economically poor people for our whole teen and adult lives.

I went on many orphanages and dumps to visit people when I lived in Southern California.

I chose a nursing school on the East side of LA that staffed a hospital that took care of the poor. I remember cleaning all the maggots out of wounds and showering them with various insecticides before they were admitted onto the ward.

During this same time Andrew was hanging out with drunks in Australia. Filling a thermos of coffee and going out to hang with them.

Andrew and I met on a ship that brought really inexpensive educational books to poor countries in Central and Latin America. We slept in warm bunks and sailed away to the next port.

After having a couple of kids we lived in San Francisco. Almost at the corner of Haight-Ashbury, just as the area was being overcome with street kids after the death of Bob Marley. Sometimes we would sit with the street kids and hear their stories. We were counted as one of them by passers by and were spat upon.  People would look at me and my kids and shake their heads.  We ran a feeding program. Brought a big pot of soup and bread into the park and shared it with whoever was hungry. We went out onto the streets and invited the street kids into our home for a shower, a meal, a chat, a song, a conversation, a cuddle. We even shared some of their diseases. But we were still separated by the fact that we had a bed under a roof in a house where we paid rent. Granted it was just a couple of mattresses we strapped to the wall with a safety belt during the day so the kids had a place to play. We also shared the flat with 7 others. It was still something that set us apart. We sat on the streets during the day and went back to sleep under a roof. We were looking in from comfortable lives.

Now, we are counted with the poor.

We are downwardly mobile.

We live in a truck.

We are global nomads.

We are travellers.

This brings about certain problems. My kids don’t need a toilet to go pee. They all prefer to find a nice, private “shrubbery” to pee on. This is fine in Morocco. This is not fine in the United Kingdom. They eat lots of weird food but they are beginning to shun private plates and utensils. What does this mean? Well, for one thing we are having more and more difficulties hanging with the middle classes the more we hang with the poor. Not as someone who goes back to their apartment after but sleep side by side with the poor. It is out of choice, we are counted as poor. But what about our kids. For those that have eyes to see our kids stick out from the norm with their acts of generosity and inclusion. However, their inability and seeming ambivalence to typical social games can make them appear immature and weird. They are flexible and independent but Andrew and I get to bear the judgement of being bad parents when we give our kids freedom and responsibility and a voice that is alien to most kids.

We are counted with the poor. Are we doing the right thing? Are we being fair to our kids? As adults Andrew and I have a choice but are we plunging our kids into a strange existence and outlook on the world that can marginalize them. I am so proud of my kids and young adults (to see the joy and the pain look at Sam’s last 2 blog entries on his diary entry and coming home ). I really dont know how to raise kids differently. Are they going to get beaten up in a world that may never understand them? They are being counted with the poor and the marginalized.  I don’t know if I feel like a good parent right now.

We are counted with the poor. We are becoming less and less able to fit in to Western middle class. We share the shame.

We are counted with the poor. What are we learning? 
Inclusion and acceptance,
sacrificial generosity,
flexibility,

creativity.

How to love and forgive complete strangers.
How not to judge.

How not to let anger take over when we feel injustice.

Shanti, shanti, shanti. Peace, peace, peace. Hope.