A Bright Winter's Day

Today is Emily's due date, but someone forgot to tell the baby, so we went for a walk along the canals near Leighton Buzzard instead. It was very beautiful. Tonight, we're going to make gingerbread and plan out a Christmas menu.

This time last year, I was also in England, but it was frosty and I was in a fog of anticipation about Bishkek. Now, Bishkek is my home, and England is sunny and a strange place to me. I still don't quite know how to act and what to say - but it's coming back, slowly.

Anyway, here is Emily with me and with Roy, healthy and well and nowhere near about to give birth.

10 Astonishing Things

1. Cars that pay attention to road signs and lane markings.

2. Being able to flush toilet paper (instead of binning it).

3. Instant hot water.

4. Shop assistants who thank you.

5. Great coffee available on every corner.

6. Perfect strangers on the street who say make eye contact and say Merry Christmas!

7. Internet as fast as lightning.

8. 78 types of muesli.

9. The absence of stray animals.

10. Speaking English!

More to come, once I recover my senses...

Bonhoeffer Prays in Prison:

God, I call to you early in the morning,
help me pray and collect my thoughts,
I cannot do so alone.
–––––
In me it is dark, but with you there is light.
I am lonely, but do not abandon me.
I am faint-hearted, but from you comes my help.
I am restless, but with you is peace.
In me is bitterness, but with you is patience.
I do not understand your ways, but you know the right way for me.
–––––
Father in heaven,
Praise and thanks be to you for the quiet of the night.
Praise and thanks be to you for the new day.
Praise and thanks be to you for all your goodness and faithfulness in my life thus far.
You have granted me much good,
now let me also accept hardship from your hand.
You will not lay on me more than I can
You make all things serve your children for the best.
–––––
Lord Jesus Christ,
you were poor and miserable, imprisoned and abandoned as I am.
You know all human need,
you remain with me when no human being stands by me,
you do not forget me and you seek me,
you want me to recognize you and turn back to you.
Lord, I hear your call and follow.
Help me!
–––––
Holy Spirit,
Grant me the faith
that saves me from despair and vice.
Grant me the love for God and others
that purges all hate and bitterness,
grant me the hope
that frees me from fear and despondency.
Teach me to discern Jesus Christ and to do his will.
–––––
Triune God,
my Creator and my Savior,
this day belongs to you. My time is in your hands.
Holy, merciful God,
my Creator and my Savior
my Judge and my Redeemer,
you know me and all my ways and actions.
You hate and punish evil in this and every world
without regard for person,
you forgive sins
for anyone who asks you sincerely,
and you love the good and reward it
on this earth with a clear conscience
and in the world to come with the crown of righteousness.
Before you I remember all those I love,
my fellow prisoners, and all
who in this house perform their difficult duty.
Lord, have mercy.
Grant me freedom again
and in the meantime let me live in such a way
that I can give account before [you] and others.
Lord, whatever this day may bring – your name be praised.

– Bonhoeffer, Letters and Papers from Prison

An Overview

In the last 48 hours, I've had a staff Christmas party; a student Christmas party; a Christmas concert; an all-night lock in with the middle schoolers (which included, but was not limited to, three hours of theatre sports between 2 and 5 am); dinner with a school family; afternoon tea with a school family; and lunch with a school family.

In the next 24 hours, I have to: pack up my apartment; pack bags for London; confirm new apartment; attend a rendition of Handel's Messiah in Russian; and catch a plane at 5 am.

And strangely, I'm not fussed. Not even breaking a sweat. Everything I've done, I love, and I even got some sleep in there somewhere. What's to come is about to be tremendously exciting. I'm so thankful to God who provides all my needs and more besides.

Midnight

I thought I was handling the busyness and the stress brilliantly, I really did. The mountainous workload, the constant building of relationships, the thousands of extracurricular activities, the pressures of living cross-culturally, the below-zero weather, the lingering sickness - I was getting rather proud of myself for managing everything, by the grace of God. Until today.

Today was the day that I had to mourn my precious cat back in Australia. I loved her - I raised her from a kitten - spent countless hours with her curled up in my lap like a soft, purring donut - I'll never see her again. It hurts like the dickens.

Today was the day that I found out I would also have to take on the sixth grade English class, beginning in January. No new teachers means extra classes. I've been holding back a mild panic attack ever since. I can do it - of course I can - but it will require the use of untapped reserves of energy. This kind of workload is new territory, and therefore frightening.

Today was the day when the devil found a chink in my armour; the chink is my lack of self-confidence. He prised it wide open and the full force of doubt came flooding through. A couple of imagined slights - an ill-conceived lesson - and suddenly I'm laid flat with the paralysing fear of Not Good Enough. It doesn't just paralyse - it eats away.

Today, the world caved in a little: just a little.

As I lay in bed, desperately tired and unable to sleep for the racing of my heart, a truth was slowly borne in upon me, and I reached for my journal so as not to forget it. The truth is this: Jesus can do immeasurably more than I am able to ask or imagine. There's nothing lying ahead that he doesn't know about and hasn't equipped me for. He is who he says he is. These are fragmented, childlike thoughts, and yet I cling to them like a drowning man, glad and grateful. I've been drowned by Not Good Enough more than once; but not this time.

I know whom I have believed, and am persuaded that he is able to keep what I've committed to him until that day.

"Christmas Poem" by G.K. Chesterton

There fared a mother driven forth
Out of an inn to roam;
In the place where she was homeless
All men are at home.
The crazy stable close at hand,
With shaking timber and shifting sand,
Grew a stronger thing to abide and stand
Than the square stones of Rome.

For men are homesick in their homes,
And strangers under the sun,
And they lay their heads in a foreign land
Whenever the day is done.

Here we have battle and blazing eyes,
And chance and honour and high surprise,
But our homes are under miraculous skies
Where the yule tale was begun.

A child in a foul stable,
Where the beasts feed and foam;
Only where He was homeless
Are you and I at home;
We have hands that fashion and heads that know,
But our hearts we lost — how long ago!
In a place no chart nor ship can show
Under the sky’s dome.

This world is wild as an old wife’s tale,
And strange the plain things are,
The earth is enough and the air is enough
For our wonder and our war;
But our rest is as far as the fire-drake swings
And our peace is put in impossible things
Where clashed and thundered unthinkable wings
Round an incredible star.

To an open house in the evening
Home shall all men come,
To an older place than Eden
And a taller town than Rome.
To the end of the way of the wandering star,
To the things that cannot be and that are,
To the place where God was homeless
And all men are at home.

Shamelessly lifted from Along Addison's Walk.

It's the Little Things

I am somewhat giddy with excitement this morning. A small stall, selling fruit and vegetables from Tashkent, has sprung up at our local bazaar, and you'll never guess what I bought: eggplant! And field mushrooms! And what's more, I heard tell of a place that's selling leeks right now. I'm going on an expedition to find it shortly. Leek and potato soup coming up.

I hope I still get excited about vegetables when I'm back in Australia. 

Two Views from the Seventh Floor

Taken with my trusty iPhone on Saturday morning: it is very pleasant to wake up to a white city, so long as one knows that one isn't required to walk around in it, and that the rusty old heating system is actually working!

            

Future of Forestry - O Holy Night

A gorgeous rendition of a beautiful carol.

A Wilde Day

We have an official cast for The Importance of Being Earnest! First meeting at lunch today, when most of them got to see the script for the first time. We read a couple of key scenes and there was much laughter, which is heart-warming indication that they understand the comic genius of the play. Hurrah! Life gets that little bit more hectic from this point onwards, but it gets correspondingly more interesting too. I've never directed, much less acted in a production, but I'm learning increasingly that it doesn't matter a whit. We have an excited, motivated cast, and an excited, creative group of potential crew, and one of the greatest plays ever written. What could be better?

'Tis Winter

It's unofficially Winter, which means I can wear my splendid big coat with a hood like the Cave of Adullam every day. I shopped at a bazaar recently for some woolly imitation Uggs and a beanie with a bobble on it, so I'm all set. 

I  enjoy my early morning walk to work, which generally has a Narnian quality about it:

But unfortunately, no fawns.

The really hard part about this seasonal change is leaving for work in the dark and then catching a marshrutka home in the dark; it's resulted in a tiredness that settled in my bones and hasn't lifted. In fact, between classes yesterday I laid out a tushuk and had a nap: and I never sleep during the day. Thankfully, today's Saturday, and it's been a blessed time of recuperation in which I have slowly graded papers - interspersed with watching episodes of The Office (US version) with my flatmate - gone bazaar shopping, and consequently made a good soup out of beans and lentils and the last of the tomatoes. Another day like this one and I'll be back to good. (Although it would be nice if the power would stay on for a couple of hours in a row, since cooking by candlelight is a little dicey, if pleasantly quaint).

Three Life Lessons from Stanley Fish

From this excellent article: 

...what have I learned along the way? Three things, closely related. The first is that people are often in pain; their lives are shadowed by memories and anticipations of inadequacy, and they are always afraid that the next moment will bring disaster or exposure. You can see it in their faces, and that is especially true of children who have not yet learned how to pretend that everything is all right and who are acutely aware of the precariousness of their situations.

The second thing I have learned is that the people who are most in pain are the people who act most badly; the worse people behave, the more they are in pain. They’re asking for help, although the form of the request is such that they are likely never to get it.

The third thing I have learned follows from the other two. It is the necessity of generosity. I suppose it is a form of the golden rule: if you want them to be generous to you, be generous to them. The rule acknowledges the fellowship of fragility we all share. In your worst moments — which may appear superficially to be your best moments — what you need most of all is the sympathetic recognition of someone who says, if only in a small smile or half-nod, yes, I have been there too, and I too have tried to shore up my insecurity with exhibitions of pettiness, bluster, overconfidence, petulance and impatience. It’s not, “But for the grace of God that could be me”; it’s, “Even with the grace of God, that will be, and has been, me.”

Kalmak Ashu with the Parentals

Here I Am

You might have noticed - I don't know, maybe you didn't - that I haven't written for some time. I'll try to do better. Promise.

Julia Gillard is spouting some guff on CNN about the values that Australians hold dear, which appear to include, without being limited to, turning asylum seekers away from our shores. She's got the same hair, the same clothes, the same voice, as when I last saw her. I even called in my Texan flatmate to listen to the improbable accent, and then sent her out again because I was embarrassed by the emptiness of Julia's words.

Anyway. It's 'Fall Break' right now. I've read about Fall Breaks in books for years, but this is the first time I've experienced one. My original plan for the week was to fly down to Osh to visit friends; however, with the recent election things are a bit dicey down there, and my team leader decided that I shouldn't go. So, I'm in Bishkek for the week, sleeping in and eating peanut butter on lapyoshka and watching terrible television and going to the gym.

...yes, going to the gym! I joined up a month ago, and so now I go to aerobics two or three times every week with some friends. The instructor is a bouncy Russian, and it takes me a while to understand her instructions, which means I'm often a couple of steps behind everyone else. I'm enjoying it though, and it's great to hang out with these friends.

There's so much to write about that I don't know where to begin, so I'm not going to write any more at all: the purpose of this post is to reassure my small but devoted readership that I'm still here - and happy.

A little bit of Marilynne Robinson

Two rather wonderful gems from Home. First:

"...he was the sort of man who noticed the absence of encouragement and drew conclusions from it." 

And:

"For her, church was an airy white room with tall windows looking out on God's good world, with God's good sunlight pouring in through the windows and falling across the pulpit where her father stood, straight and strong, parsing the broken heart of humankind and praising the loving heart of Christ. That was church." 

To read Marilynne Robinson is to read a prayer that throws all human emotion into relief.

There's the joy of the father at the return of a prodigal son; the perseverance of the saints; the profound sorrow of ruined relationships; the beauty of worship and sacrifice, the tragedy of sin, and wonder at a beautiful, sad world.

If I could write a page of prose half as lovely as her pages, I would be well content.