A Time to Build

Which of you, desiring to build a tower, does not first sit down and count the cost, whether he has enough to complete it? Otherwise, when he has laid a foundation and is not able to finish, all who see it begin to mock him, saying, ‘This man began to build and was not able to finish.’

Moving to France was certainly a matter of counting the cost, as well as staying in France...and staying in France again. A thousand and one factors bounce around in your mind like a pinball machine, setting off all kinds of bells and whistles. This summer, the decision to board the plane and return to the land of our dreams (or land of our exile, depending on our mood) was anything but cut-and-dried. We talked, we prayed, we made an elaborate mind-map that covered the entire dining room table at my parent's house to brainstorm the pros and cons. Finally, it just came down to the fact that we had two tickets in our name on the 4th of September, 2008 to fly from Minneapolis St. Paul airport to Charles de Gaulle Paris.

Why such intense forethought, you ask? It's Paris, right? "Wish you were here", right?

Well, in some sense. But it's also a matter of weaving these beautiful everydays into a larger, more purposeful story. And although that's mainly the job of the Author and Editor of our faith, we evidently have a role to play. As the man in the story above, we sit down, make the best estimations that we can, lay foundations, and (if we are wise) finish a tower or two in our lifetime. Our question for the moment is simply: where to build? The awkward truth is that the longings for professional fulfillment - particularly for the man of the house - appear to be pulling us back to the geographical location we just left behind. Hmm. What to do?

We're calling it an extended business trip. More details to follow.

Movable Feast

"If you are lucky enough to have lived in Paris as a young man, then wherever you go, it stays with you, for Paris is a movable feast."
-Ernest Hemingway

Last week we went feasting. Here is our trail of crumbs.

First, the premiere of an original theatrical production. A dear friend of ours is the writer and director of Sweet Ladies, his first opening in Paris. We wended our way through the 11eme arrondissement to the Theatre a l'Epouvantail, a tidy little black box tucked into street with the eyebrow-raising name of rue de la Folie Mericourt. Sweet Ladies, indeed. But this was anything but a "folie" (burlesque comedy in parlance of old). Rather, it was a sobering look into the human condition, dipping the pen of Shakespeare directly into the heart of man, and seeing what came out. Two women, a mother and daughter, grapple with their estranged relationship through the lines of the Great Bard. Simply amazing.

Next, it had always been my intention to visit the former abode of Victor Hugo at 6 Place des Vosges, which is a stone's throw from my workplace. With the ghosts of Esmerelda and Jean Valjean hanging on my shoulder and whispering in my ear, I trooped over during the Journees du Patrimoine (Heritage Days), which earned me free entry. It was an elegant space indeed. And a glorious surprise - I cam across a watercolor that depicted a bell tower in Gentilly, the suburb where we live. Apparently, he used to rent a room out here, which of course was a little village at the time.

As long as I was looking into powerful figures, I decided to hunker down and wait in line at the Palais Royale, which was also giving free tours. This was built for the influential Cardinal Richelieu, and now houses the various members of France's democracy - the Senate and the Judiciary and others. Curiously enough, they have preserved the little prayer-room of a former monarch in this most strict atheistic spaces. Of course, I overheard French people commenting on the tiny oratory - isn't that quaint. I gently suggested to one monsieur that it certainly wouldn't hurt if the Senate members did pray every once in while.

Sunday was our final go at taking advantage of Heritage Days, so we both headed out to Versailles. We eagerly grabbed pastries and coffee and a train, only to arrive to a vast sea of people. You'd think all of Paris has come to recapture the king and queen. Helas. After a disheartening forty minutes in the ticket queue, we finally decided that we'd save the chateau for a quieter day and go off to see La Domaine de Marie-Antoinette - you know, her home away from home away from home away from...

Well you get the idea. We got to wondering - how many beds did this woman have? Well, we all know that her extravagances were solely responsible for the governmental deficit that led to the downfall of monarchy, so what was I supposed to expect? Well, let's just say we underestimated a wee bit. There was Grand Trianon. And the Petit Trianon. And her hobby farm, where Marie-Antoinette and her ladies-in-waiting could cleanse their rich-fat souls and consciences with some good old-fashioned farmwork. Apparently, the cows were also carefully cleaned, before they could be milked by Your Highness.

One last little vignette. After church, we jumped on with a group a friends headed off to the North of Paris near Montmartre where a friend's band was playing. This was chanson francaise at its best - flirtatious and funny and we washed it all down with pate, pain, fromage, and a good glass of Bourgeuil. I mean, really. What else do you need for dinner?

Yes, it is good to be back.

Good Times

Venturing out for a run in the chilly air this past week, I was reminded that - oh yes! - the sun does indeed slant both ways. Owing to jetlag, this obvious fact had been a rather faint memory as of late. Yes, I am indignant that a mere bodily weakness has stolen some dozen similar beauties from me since our return, but who can stand against the heavy eyelids of seven hours' time difference? I am weak.

Not everyone will be able to relate to the minor shame I suffer related to sleeping in - there are a blessed many who can sleep a very long time with no qualms whatsoever. I envy you. And yet, I am glad for my own disposition on the whole . Even when northern climes eventually do yield days that are short and dark, the first half has always seemed to me to be life magnified - something akin to putting on your glasses after a good wipe.

By contrast, the midafternoon finds me short-tempered - if not irritable beyond recognition. I think it has something to do with the hours spent staring at that bright false angel, that lighted box of counterfeit glory so omnipresent in our modern lives. We try to revive our beauty-starved souls with catnaps and coffees, but these prop our sodden spirits only by mere increments. What will return us to the first glory? His mercies are new every morning, but what about the afternoon doldrums?

And how about this for a cheery thought?

There is no shortage of good days. It is good lives that are hard to come by.
-Annie Dillard, The Writing Life

What then is this lifelong fling? What transforms a series of good days (or "good times", as Karl is fond of inserting into the conversation at any given moment) into a good life? There is the evening with the good wine, the morning with the stunning sunrise, and the glorious couple of moments when you catch a whiff of baguette walking past the boulangerie...do they add up to nothing more than random occurrences? Are those brave words emblazoned on the side of the Walker Art Center unduly optimistic?

Yes. As usual, I have painted myself into a metaphysical corner, trying to grapple with impossible questions of here and there, then and now. Help me, T.S. Eliot.

Not the intense moment Isolated, with no before or after But a lifetime burning in every moment.
-East Coker

A lifetime burning in every moment. Slightly more on the optimistic side, that one. Which can be helpful when you're wondering what lies on the road ahead. Especially when you buy too often into the lie that only people falling between the ages of 18 and 25 or so are beleaguered by decisions regarding God, work, love, school, and the like. Culture seems to dictate that we should have these bits and pieces put together by our late twenties. (With the occasional allowance for the unhappy 45-50-year old male who wants a red sportscar, of course.) The truth is, we all face these maddening seasons of rethinking and re-evaluating. (Er - you don't? Well, I do.) Indeed, I had been in something of a tizzy over grad school recently, but after much turmoil gratefully fell upon the following passage:

I have taught you the way of wisdom; I have led you in the paths of uprightness.
When you walk, your step will not be hampered, and if you run, you will not stumble.
Proverbs 4:11-12

He has taught us, so now it is time to walk. Maybe this kind of exhortation (with a little minor help from the poets) is the only thing that will keep us sane in a life that tends to the labyrinthine. The trail may twist, turn, ascend and descend, but if we have been teachable in the way of wisdom, we will not stumble.

I think tomorrow morning calls for another run. (And maybe tea around 4 pm or so...groan.) the intense moment

Melting Potstickers

The Midwest is assumed by most French people to be a culturally-starved, hopelessly-homogenized region. As in, you poor thing, you come from there? You know, if the States were the afterlife, the few elect would go to New York and San Francisco, while the multitude of sinners would languish in the vast stretches in between those venerated cities. Case in point: we chatted with a guy in a bar near Bastille the other night who had studied in Wisconsin as a teenager for three weeks on a study exchange. While his well-intentioned host parents planned his visit to the minute to take full advantage of their corner of the globe, the 17-year-old was high (okay, probably in more ways than one) on dreams fueled by Jack Kerouac. Somehow downtown Madison just didn't do the trick.

Still, we Americans tend to pride ourselves on our country's status as a "melting pot". And I must say, it's true. After six weeks in Minnesota, I am still relishing in retrospect a smörgåsbord of experiences that would shush any Parisian into respectful silence in a hurry.

For starters, I clapped and cheered as my little brother earned his next belt in Japanese martial arts. We attended our friend's milonga, an Argentinian tango party, meeting fascinating dancers from the world over. We watched in delight as our friend Ledung belted out the eighties to the last hangers-on in a Vietnamese wedding. Karl made his new fancy Swedish keyboard wail the American blues on several happy occasions. And fabulous French, German, Italian, Vietnamese, Spanish, and countless other culinary influences kept popping up in both fancy dinner parties and casual suppers.

And then there was the Minnesota State Fair. Heck, we didn't even make is to the "International Bazaar"- our experiences were already plenty diverse as it was. We were reminded of the importance of dairy consumption, principles of hot dish, proper handling of firearms, and the joys of polka-ing to Norwegian airs played by a traditional accordion band. You just never know what you might find in Minnesota - if you go looking for it, that is. And this, I believe, is the key difference between life in the Midwest and our life here in Paris. In the States, one quickly becomes bogged down by everyday suburban life where everyone kinda looks the same (thank you Target) and complains about same things (i.e. gas prices). You have to go out of your way to find something different.

Here in Paris, "something different" tends to come and find you.

We arrived back a week and a half ago to live with a family from the States - a Japanese/American couple with two great kids. They are hospitality incarnate, so we weren't the only houseguests involved. A mutual friend of ours from Malaysia had recently come back from studying for six months in Sweden and was ready to introduce us to as much Asian cooking as we could handle. Which turns out to be quite a bit. As a Malaysian, Thomas is also from a "melting pot": his home country is a mix of various influences, which comes out in language, religion, cooking, and outlook. All week has been a tasty and fascinating introduction to a continent that we have yet to explore. This all culminated when we all went to a Chinese family's house for the mooncake festival.

This holiday usually involves small children carrying lights around in the dark streets, singing, and eating mooncake. Despite a lack of small kids at the party, we still enjoyed the barbecue, conversation, traditional folklore stories, dessert brought direct from Taiwan, Karl's improvised hymn to mooncake ("my little mooncake...where are you?"), and the glow of the pretty red lanterns. And for this joyous meeting, we sang "thank you Jesus"...in English, French, Spanish, Chinese, and Malaysian.

I guess we'll stick to whatever melting pot we can find.

Prisoner of the Day No. 7

Ms. Ying Dai [a former prisoner], is a Falun Gong practitioner who survived Chinese labour camps and now lives in Norway after being granted refugee status by the UN. [She] confirmed the blood testing of Falun Gong practitioners [in order to harvest their organs]. She also told of the persecution she endured in China together with other practitioners.

"For five years, I was arrested, I was incarcerated. We were severely beaten. But we were no animals and we committed no crime."

"The degree of persecution is beyond what people in the West can imagine", she told the audience.

Mr. Erping Zhang, the director for the Association for Asian Research, a New York-based organization, presented an overview of Falun Gong, a spiritual practice that includes meditation, and of its persecution by the Chinese communist regime.

The practice, first made public in China in 1992, was originally endorsed by the government for its ability to improve health and morale, but it fell out of favour after the officially atheist regime found it had attracted more adherents than there were members in the Chinese Communist Party.

Zhang emphasized that Falun Gong practitioners have been vilified by the Chinese media, which are under the control of the ruling communist party in China. The media have treated Falun Gong worse than criminals, Zhang said, and this has helped substantiate the persecution.

Source: Epoch Times

Prisoner of the Day No. 6

Beijing bookstore owner and House Church leader Mr. Shi Weihan, has been suffering a deterioration in health since his imprisonment four months ago.

China Aid Association (CAA) says that poor prison conditions and refusal of diabetes medication have contributed to Shi’s lack of health. Shi has lost more than 10 kg in body weight amidst the constant physical and psychological torture employed by prison officials.

CAA says that recently Shi was coerced to sign and recognize a confession convicting him of “engaging in the printing and distribution of a large number of illegal publications.”

The charges stem from Shi’s printing of Bibles and Christian literature which were sold at his Beijing Christian bookstore, but were deemed “illegal” by Beijing authorities because the books were not printed by the Three-Self Patriotic Movement Church.

Source: Radio Free China

Prisoner of the Day No. 5

He Depu is a brave man.

The jailed Chinese dissident has sent a letter to International Olympic Committee head Jacques Rogge, telling him prisons have worsened and urging him to go see for himself, a rights group said Thursday. He Depu, a veteran activist serving an eight-year sentence, told Rogge that political prisoners were particularly worse off, despite hopes the Olympics would be a catalyst for change, New York-based Human Rights in China said.

"The Olympics are fast approaching," said the letter, written in Block 17 of Beijing's No. 2 Prison in April. "But the limitations placed on us as political prisoners in Beijing have not only not lessened, but rather have increased."

Political prisoners are not allowed to call or meet with their families, obtain a reduced sentence or participate in recreational activities organised by the prison, he wrote. But conditions have deteriorated for all types of prisoners, political and criminal alike, he said -- food has gotten steadily worse while medical care is inadequate, with sometimes fatal results.

"For many years, there have been two numbers that have been particularly high: the first is the number of sick prisoners, the second is the extremely high number of deaths...I hope that when it is convenient, you can come just once to the Beijing No. 2 Prison to see what it is like for the prisoners living here."the letter said.

He has been a democracy activist since the late 1970s, and was sentenced to eight years in jail in November 2003 after signing an open letter calling for political reform. He has repeatedly suffered abuse while in detention leading to permanent injuries, according to Human Rights in China.

Sources: AFP
Human Rights Watch

Prisoner of the Day No. 4

Ni Yulan, a 47-year-old lawyer, has spent a decade defending the rights of forcibly evicted residents. Ni's trial was scheduled to take place in Beijing on August 4, four days before the opening of the 2008 Beijing Olympics.

"Ni Yulan is a courageous activist whose only crime has been to defend her rights and the rights of victims of forced evictions in Beijing," said Sophie Richardson, Asia advocacy director at Human Rights Watch. "To try her on the eve of the Games is an extraordinary insult to those who lost their homes to the Beijing Olympics and shows contempt for human rights concerns raised by the international community."

Hundreds of thousands of residents have been evicted and their homes demolished in the course of Bejiing's Olympic makeover. These evictions rarely respected due process or the requirements under Chinese law for consultation or compensation. In some cases, residents were violently evicted by thugs and wrecking crews hired by the construction companies clearing sites for new buildings (for background, see Human Rights Watch's report, "Demolished: Forced Evictions and the Tenants' Rights Movement in China."

On April 15, 2008, without warning, more than a dozen workers and police knocked down the wall surrounding Ni's house in Qianzheng hutong, in the central Xicheng district of Beijing. According to her husband, Dong Jiqin, when Ni tried to protect her home, she was hit on head with a brick and dragged to the ground by one of the demolition workers. Police detained Ni and accused her of assaulting a demolition worker. According to information from China Human Rights Defender (CHRD), a Chinese human rights monitoring group, police at the Xinjiekou Police Station beat Ni until she lost consciousness. They also confiscated her crutches, without which she has extreme difficulty standing. On April 29, the Beijing Public Security Bureau of Xicheng district formally arrested her on charges of 'obstructing a public official' (Article 277 of the Criminal Law), a charge that carries a maximum sentence of three years in prison.

Ni's lawyer was allowed to visit her in mid-June in detention and reported that, "She was in a very bad condition. She could hardly walk, she was very, very weak and deathly pale," he told overseas media. On June 30, Ni filed a complaint accusing the police of beating her in custody.

This was not Ni's first brush with the authorities over housing rights. In April 2002, Ni was detained for 75 days after she filmed the destruction of the house of an evicted tenant. While in detention, she was severely beaten, leaving her maimed and in need of crutches to walk. In September 2002, she was sentenced to a year in prison, losing her lawyer's license as a result. Undaunted, she continued to denounce illegal evictions and unfair compensations after her release.

Source: Human Rights Watch
Ni Yulan's Open Letter to Falun Gong

Prisoner of the Day No. 3

Ji Sizun, 58, a self-described grassroots legal activist from Fujian province, was arrested on August 11, 2008. On August 8, Ji had applied to the Deshengmenwai police station in Beijing’s Xicheng District for a permit to hold a protest in one of the city’s three designated “protest zones.” In his application, Ji stated that the protest would call for greater participation of Chinese citizens in political processes, and denounce rampant official corruption and abuses of power. He was arrested after checking back at the police station on the status of his application, witnesses told Human Rights Watch.

Eyewitnesses said Ji entered the police station at around 10:45 a.m. on August 11. At 12:15 p.m., he was escorted out of the building and put into a dark-colored, unmarked Buick by several men who appeared to be plainclothes policemen. Ji managed to make a short call to his family to notify them he had “problems,” but has since disappeared and remains unreachable on his mobile phone.

Public demonstrations critical of the Chinese government routinely reap swift and harsh retribution from state security forces. On July 23, however, the Beijing Organizing Committee for the Olympic Games (BOCOG) security director, Liu Shaowu, announced the creation of three protest zones in Beijing parks. He told reporters that: “People or protesters who want to express their personal opinions can go to do so” in line with “common practice in other countries.”

The three protest zones have so far remained empty of demonstrators.

Source: Human Rights Watch

Prisoner of the Day No. 2

For those of you who are just tuning in this week, I am writing a short post every day of the remaining Olympic Games. These posts will feature one prisoner in China. Please pray for them and tell the truth about their plight. For the safety of the dissidents, I am only discussing those who have asked that their stories be made public, or those whose cases are already high-profile. But please remember that these individuals are also emblematic of several hundreds of thousands of other prisoners in similar situations in China right now.

Prominent rights activist Zeng Jinyan is out of contact and feared to have been detained by police before the opening of the Beijing Olympics, a rights group said. All attempts to contact Zeng had failed and it is believed that she "disappeared" from her Beijing home on Aug. 7, the Chinese Human Rights Defenders (CHRD) reported. She has lived under "residential surveillance", or virtual house arrest, for many months and was already prevented by state security police from meeting foreign journalists or speaking to them by telephone. "The control is tightening," Zeng said in a brief e-mail message on July 10.

Zeng’s husband, prominent dissident Hu Jia, was sentenced to three years and four months in prison in April after a court convicted him of subversion. The U.S.-based Dui Hua Foundation said Hu’s arrest "cannot escape being connected to the Olympics". Both Hu and Zeng have spoken out on human rights issues in China and voiced support for the Dalai Lama, the exiled Tibetan Buddhist leader.

"As the Olympics open in Beijing, it is believed that Zeng was taken away to ensure that no journalists will have access to her and that she will be unable to speak out about Hu Jia during the Games," a CHRD statement said.

The statement urged U.S. President George W. Bush, French President Nicolas Sarkozy and International Olympic Committee President Jacques Rogge, to ask Chinese President Hu Jintao to free Zeng.

Sources:
The Asian Pacific Post
Wikipedia article on Zeng
Zeng's Blog (in Chinese)
USA Today article on Zeng

Prisoner of the Day No. 1

For the week or so, you might might want to tune into the blog with a bit more frequency than usual. For every one of the remaining days in the Olympic Games (there are 10), I will post a quick notification about someone who has recently been arrested by the Chinese government. They include practitioners of religion (even "state-approved"), to political dissidents, to anyone who speaks against anything the government does. The net is spread wider and wider every month. I ask you, dear reader, to do the following to the best of your ability:

1) If you are a Christian, pray for them.
2) Become informed about the state of human rights in this country.
3) Pass on the truth to everyone you know.

Prisoner of the Day No. 1

Pastor Zhang “Bike” Mingxuan, known for traveling across China on a bicycle to evangelize, was arrested by Chinese police just two days before the Olympics began. Pastor Bike was the inspiration for the recent partnership between The Voice of the Martyrs and China Aid Association to create the Olympic Prayer Band. Thanks to Pastor Bike’s inspiration and the commitment of concerned Christians across the United States, more than 800,000 prayer bands have been circulated.

On Aug. 6, Pastor Bike was arrested while trying to deliver medicine to his ailing wife. His wife and another pastor were also arrested. The organization "Voice of the Martyrs" has also reported this week that Chinese officials are opening a full investigation of the Olympic Prayer Bands that were distributed to house church members within China. Despite this increased pressure from Chinese authorities, Chinese Christians continue to ask for prayer and to make their plight known. This was Zhang Mingxuan's 12th arrest.

He has asked for his identity to be revealed to bring continued attention to the persecution of Christians in Communist China.

sources: http://chinaaid.org/, http://www.persecution.com/

Bearing the Torch

I did not watch the opening ceremonies of the 2008 Beijing Olympic Summer Games, but the journey of the flame from city to city had held my attention for several months beforehand. Mainly because of the kerfuffle it made coming through Paris in April. Waves of angry protesters came on the scene, some of them attempting to quench the fire in protest of Chinese human rights violations, while the French police distinguished themselves by beating the more feisty and vociferous members of the crowd. (Incidentally, the bloody images that I remember from French television are not to be found anywhere on Google.) Jin Jing, one of the carriers in Paris - admittedly a very brave woman to roll in her wheelchair through a crowd of French protesters -became a national hero in her own country, hailed for protecting the flame against "sabotage" in a foreign country. And Sarkozy apologized.

By the time it reached China, the flame incited mainly positive responses from onlookers. In a spectacular show of human invention and endeavour, the final bearer of the torch was suspended by wires, like Peter Pan, and "ran" around the rim of the enormous stadium, finally lighting the flame, which zipped up to the cauldron, signaling the beginning of the Games of the XXIX Olympiad. (Thanks, Youtube.)

Five days before this stunning event, another torchbearer quietly left the world that had both hated him and loved him. On August 3, 2008, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn passed away from heart failure in his home near Moscow. In a fit of curiosity, I researched whatever I could find online about this extraordinary man, and when I decided Wikipedia wasn't satisfying enough, rummaged around my parents' bookshelves for a copy of The Gulag Archipelago. It was so captivating that I couldn't tear myself away to watch anything on television, eventful or no. I was deep in communist Russia, learning the truth about...them. And myself.

This book is certainly a critique of ideas - particularly communism, an ideology which Solzhenitysn believed would inevitably culminate in a violent regime. Good laws and good systems are a necessary part of the human existence, and the choices we make with these are crucial. Dorothy Sayers reminded me just the other day of how "law" works in an imperfect world:

"The more closely the moral code agrees with natural law, the more it makes for freedom in human behavior; the more it departs from the natural law, the more it tends to enslave mankind and to produce the catastrophes called "judgments of God"." (The Mind of the Maker, 9).

But the author of The Gulag Archipelago has a much bigger point to make. His political expose is unique in that he claims that he himself could have been among the perpetrators of evil in his country, given a different twist of fate. That is, the system is evil, and so am I...and so are you. This is so very different from the typical American right-wing response (go find evil and root it out before it gets us), and the typical American left-wing response (there's no such thing as evil). The great Russian writer, a devout Christian, cuts across our party lines to remind us of truth and humility all at once:

"If only it were so simple! If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?"

To live astutely in a fallen world, we must first know ourselves. Know thyself! This reminds me of the Apostle John's account of Jesus' life, when he says that Jesus was not "entrusting Himself" to man, for He knew all men, and because He did not need anyone to testify concerning man, for He Himself knew what was in man" (John 2:24-25). First, we look to ourselves. Only then can we begin to understand our world.

Back to China. As you have probably guessed, there is something about reading up on the horrors of a Communist regime that puts a slight distaste in my mouth for watching the Beijing Olympics. I have caught a race here and there, and not without enjoyment. But I cannot help but imagine that behind all commercialized glitz and glamor lies a cruel and cold system of control that has, in Sayers' words, "departed from the natural law." Go world? Really? We are way too self-congratulatory.

Laojiao. "Reform though labour". These are Chinese camps that crowd in petty criminals (prostitutes, drug dealers, political dissidents, members of house churches, and practitioners of sects -the usual dangerous types) for up to four years. Four years may not sound like much, but this is how it all starts. (For example, Solzhenitsyn recounts how over the course of his imprisonment how the typical sentences went from 8 years, to "tenners", to twenty, to twenty-five. Essentially, a death sentence for most, given camp conditions and rigors. ) I am reminded of the sober faces of Falun Gong believers marching bravely and carefully up our street in Paris a year and a half ago with signs reading "Truth, Goodness, Tolerance" and handing out fliers outlining the categorical suppression of their faith in their homeland. In France, they are allowed to speak in freedom. But what about the days of eerie silence following the recent crackdown on the largely peaceful protest of Tibetan monks? Where they are now?

"Are you from freedom?"

This quivering question was apparently a common enough greeting to a newcomer in the Laojiao - er, I mean - Gulag of Communist Russia. The pitiful figure would stumble into his squalid cell, starving, sleep-deprived, and dazed from torture - and land amongst fellow prisoners, anxious for his story and news from the outside world.

Let's be honest. Not much has changed since 70 or 80 years ago- neither in the heart of man, nor in the systems to which the pride of man succumbs. We who are still "from freedom" have our own torch to bear. Know yourself, and tell the truth about your times.

P.S. Please see the The Plank (a blog at the New Republic) for their "Chinese Dissident of the Day" feature. If you are a follower of Jesus Christ, please pray for these prisoners.

The Pull of Home

Please pardon my extended silence. I have been homing. Yes, like a pigeon.

You might remember my disparaging comments some weeks back about a particularly dirty and cosmopolitan manifestation of the Columbidae family. They are, in fact, quite disgusting. But I would like to revise my statements so as to leave some room for another variety known for their uncanny ability to find their way home. Let's just say I've felt an empathy for them lately. Homing pigeons are truly extraordinary creatures. They are capable of flying immense distances in order to come back to the location from whence they came. Ornithologists call this returning to a destination that is "mentally-marked." I call it fascinating.

Apparently, there are several species of birds with homing abilities. Encyclopedia Britannica informs me that the Manx shearwater (a species of bird primarily from the Isle of Man) was transported in a closed container to a point about 5,500 km (3,400 miles) from its nest, and returned to the nest in 12 ¹/₂ days. That's an average of 272 miles a day. I guess if I lived anywhere as astoundingly beautiful as the Isle of Man, I would probably be in a hurry to hop home, too. But geez.

Regardless of location, humans seem to be similarly wired. Just a few days into our stay in Minnesota, the bulk of our homebound flight already accomplished in a packed airplane, I decided to unfurl my cramped muscles and go for a jog. With no particular route in mind, I stepped out onto my in-laws' driveway and took off. One hour later, I arrived panting at my parent's doorstep.

The pull of home.

The next day, I decided to try to elude the obvious by running in the opposite direction. Maybe this would overcome the gravitational magnetism of childhood abodes. Right. Half an hour later, I found myself padding along Hamilton Avenue, the street where I lived until the age of six. I had heard a rumor that they had torn down our old house to put up a new one. You see, sleepy old Deephaven is very chic now, and apparently the scrubby lake cabin from the 1920's that lodged my earliest memories wasn't going to cut it anymore. But the familiar pine tree still stood tall in the front yard. It was raining. I jogged around the back of the house to pass through the intense green of the untouched woods and silently thanked the new owners for respecting them. It suddenly struck me how funny it was that the workers sheet-rocking the new garage didn't know about my bunny rabbit buried somewhere deep in the ground back there. My dad had to chip for a long time at the frozen ground, because Thumper died in the wintertime.

The pull of home.

This is anything but a sentimental reminisce. We have all experienced such moments out of time. They strike an essential chord; betray our desire for another place. As C.S. Lewis explains so beautifully in his book The Weight of Glory:

"In speaking of this desire for a far-off country, which we find in ourselves even now, I feel a certain shyness. I am almost committing an indecency. I am trying to rip open the inconsolable secret in each one of you - the secret which hurts so much that you take your revenge on it by calling it names like Nostalgia and Romanticism and Adolescence; the secret which also pierces with such sweetness that when, in very intimate conversation, when mention of it becomes imminent, we grow awkward and affect to laugh at ourselves; the secret we cannot hide and cannot tell, though we desire to do both."


Was I sad that the little house with the red trim was gone? Perhaps a slight twinge of melancholy. (I had indulged from time to time in the impossible fantasy of buying that house back someday.) But infinitely more moving than the loss of a small cottage was my joy over the accuracy of my internal compass. Here, I was being reminded of the "inconsolable secret", and I didn't have to hide or tell it to anyone. I could stand in the green luminosity of a dense stand of oaks and maples and enjoy it. Let myself become re-oriented. Rather than the past "mental markers,"I am ready to dwell on a future place. This is...


the pull of Home.

Eternity in our Hearts

I always enjoyed the Sunday mornings when when I was given the eternal privilege of seeing the crazy path that Jeffy from Family Circus had traveled over the course of one day of play. In my imagination, this path has always been a sort of thread that trails behind every human being as we make our way through life in the world. We unwittingly cross over and under millions of other threads, pull them taut or let them go slack. It is as if we are an extremely complex loom, with our lives shuttling back and forth, up and down, and even on the diagonal. We are born, die, plant, uproot, kill, heal, break down, build up, weep, laugh, mourn, dance, cast away stones, gather stones together, embrace, refrain from embracing, seek, lose, keep, cast away, keep silent, speak, love, hate, make war, make peace....tear apart and sew.

We are kept blissfully unaware of this weighty fact most of the time, as it would probably hurt our brains beyond repair. But we do get flashes of understanding from time to time, through Scripture and sometimes the poets:

"Yet the enchainment of past and future
Woven in the weakness of the changing body,
Protects mankind from heaven and damnation
Which flesh cannot endure.
Time past and time future
Allow but a little consciousness.
To be conscious is not to be in time". (T.S. Eliot, Burnt Norton)

For our own sanity, the Eternal One keeps us occupied from the dizzying thought that with every word and deed we are weaving an intricate tapestry "I have seen the business that God has given to the sons of men to be busy with. He has made everything beautiful in its time; also he has put eternity into man's mind, yet so that he cannot find out what God has done from the beginning to the end." (Ecclesiastes). We feel it, but we cannot fully comprehend it. As T.S. Eliot says earlier: "human kind cannot bear very much reality." We are allowed glimpses, but not the whole thing until our minds and bodies are made new, able to bear up under such glory.

Besides a madman, a poet, or both, I suppose it is those who live the longest that also begin to see patterns in the weave. I have one last, slim chapter left to read of the incomparable 100 Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez. I think of Pilar Ternera, a wizened centenarian fortuneteller, who slowly gives up her use of cards to tell the future, and relies rather on her experience as time goes on and histories in the same old town cross over one another and repeat themselves. Sometimes we call this wisdom. Maybe this is why God limits us to 100-some years of life on this earth - any longer, and perhaps the seeds of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil still lodged in our stomaches would sprout and grow and overcome us.

There's also something about movement in space that makes one curiously aware of the eternal. Like Jeffy, we are wandering around yet again without a fixed address this summer. The uprooting of everyday life has become an annual ritual for us - throwing away things to make the suitcases lighter, boarding trains and planes, landing somewhere old and somewhere new. I think also of dear friends of ours who are moving from Minnesota to New York this fall. It is a challenging lifestyle, but it is one that I am increasingly fond of, because it reminds me that what is most significant in life is not a place, or material things, but relationships with people. This is where the threads cross, tangle, knot, or fix into place, so we remember where to return after our wanderings, and the overall picture is made all the more beautiful for the returning.

Coo.

With all European eyes glued to their "tellies", thanks to tennis or le foot, some conflict of opinion has arisen as to the rights of pigeons under English law. Animal activists are a funny breed. Why anyone would get their tennis skirt in a bunch about knocking off a few disease-ridden flying rodents overnight at Wimbledon is beyond me. First have a gander at the full story here:

Wimbledon Breaking Law by Killing Pigeons

My favorite part of the story is the last line: "The club also took action on Sunday to eradicate a swarm of bees. They too were seen as a threat to players' welfare." There seems to be a gaping lack of logic here. If you're going to protest, make a scene about the bees. Bees make flowers beautiful and sweet honey for our mouths. Pigeons....spread 40 some diseases to humans and leave their destructive droppings on everything. As a kid, I used to think they were cute - the funny way they walked and the odd little noises that they make.

Then I moved to Paris.

Pigeon Blues

Everywhere i look I see them
Everywhere I go I hear them flap and coo
And their poo, it's everywhere too.
Don't give them one crumb to eat
They'll bring their friends from down the street.
Coo-coo. Coo-ka-tchoo.

When I find a place to sit down
When I finally find a bench to rest and muse
It's no use, they come peruse
The ground at my feet for bread,
Until they peck at me instead,
Oh, coo. Coo-ka-tchoo.

Hard to know if they're just stupid
Hard to know what's really goin' on behind
Those bobbing heads, those beady eyes.
But all they think about is stuffing
Bellies full with all but nothing.
Pee-yoo. Coo-ka-poo.

A little juvenile, perhaps, but I guess I too am an animal activist of sorts after all. I don't like pigeons, and this is my anti-pigeon song. PETA, eat your heart out. And maybe some pigeons while you're at it. (You'd be in good company.)

Training Wheels

There comes a time (or numerous times) to every blogger to admit that they have been terribly lax in their authorial duties and beg for mercy from the faithful few that still pop in every once in a while with ragged hopes for an update. Sorry about that. When summer vacation hits, we get a bit antsy, and tend to schlep ourselves around with as much frequency as possible, our usual routines happily upset by piercing whistle of trains departing and arriving. However, it does make it terribly difficult to keep up the writing. (Case in point: I’m drafting this on the Eurostar.) Let’s see what we can do to catch up.

Recently, realizing a long-time dream of both of ours, we decided to invest in some new equipment for bike touring on the continent. Through the wonders of ebay and Karl’s expert bidding wiles, we managed to land two remarkably good buys. Okay. At first glance, our slim road bikes with bulky paniers comically burgeoning from either side might temptingly call to mind a skinny, overburdened ass. However, we were hoping that our new acquisitions (bought sight-unseen, I might add) would fulfill something more like the role of trusty steed.

We picked up one bike in Paris and headed down to Aix-en-Provence, bound for a rendez-vous with the second vélo and its previous owners who generously had offered to bring it directly to the train station. The plan was to leave right from there and bike over to Montpellier. (See cute little sign on the right.)

However, we didn't have the privilege of the cute little sign until we were about 20 km within reach....three days later. Now, despite the values of intensive research involving Google Maps, it had somehow escaped both of us that nothing really can replace a good map. It wasn’t so much that we didn’t know where to go, but how to avoid finding ourselves on the autoroute, which are forbidden to cyclists in France, and rightly so. Apparently, on the Autoroute du Soleil -which takes depressed Northerners to the sunny south, one of the most frequented tollways in Europe – highway officials give pedestrians an average of 30 minutes’ life expectancy. Yes, we steered clear of that one, though not everyone is this prudent. (Apparently, the same weekend we were down south, a 44-year-old woman got a ticket on the Autoroute du Soleil for riding an "inappropriate vehicle"....her bicycle.)

In addition to the lack of cycle-friendly routes immediately available to us, our bikes began revealing their inevitable idiosyncrasies, which kept us overnight in Aix waiting for the bike shop to open. Of course, one must see these things as providential. We got a fabulous impromptu tour of the city from a local bike enthusiast, and quickly realized our error in rushing through such a pretty spot. Rose walls, blue skies, warm smiles, and narrow winding streets called to mind more Italy than France. We had definitely arrived in the Sud.

The next morning, we set off north towards the Luberon region. We crossed the Durance, which is evidently at record-high levels, chatted with a grocery store owner in Cadenet whose sign declared him as a type formidable (terrific guy), and tried to beat the sun to Cavaillon. By now, the trails were proper bike routes and wended their way through stunning bluffs (near Lourmarin), endless vineyards, and past a row of heavily-laden cherry trees ripening in the late golden sun, whose branches were somewhat relieved by our passing. Soon, it became apparent that a bottle of rosé was in order. Fortunately for us, the roadside cave was still open, and we nabbed a bottle of the first stuff we laid our tastebuds on. A marvelous wonder that cost 2 euros. Like flowers in the mouth. Anyway…

Having been detained by such important errands, we reached the sleepy village of Cheval Blanc at a late hour. Nearly the only soul who was still around was a man in his pizza truck, and even he was cleaning up. Still, last two slices of the evening were ours, along with some excellent advice. I asked (with as innocent a smile as possible) “if one were to sleep under the stars ‘round these parts, where would one do it, exactly?” His bemused reply involved a bouncy ride in his fragrant truck to the nearby wilds of Provence: lovely, windy, and quiet. We had found the ideal, isolated spot…except for a few local couples who had also tried to find the ideal, isolated spot. Ah well.

The next morning involved more sun, cherries, lemon yogurt, fruity bread, and coffee on a terrace in town – what better way to celebrate Abbey’s birthday? I can’t think of one. Except maybe continuing by riding through such beautiful areas such as Arles (important Roman city), Les Baux-de-Provence (a village carved into the rock), the Camargue (famous for its wild horses and its domesticated rice) and Aigues-Mortes.

We were both pleasantly surprised to discover that this last place was a medieval walled city, chock full of lovely restaurants offering mussels, fries, and other temptations to hungry travelers. I think the place we ate was even called the Wayward Traveler or something. We bedded down for the night just outside the city, next to the aforementioned wall. Unfortunately, we had not come prepared for the mosquitos and wild dogs, but somehow it all worked out. Ask me about it sometime.

Finally, early the next morning, we rolled into Montpellier. Three days, 220 kilometers, two flats, one bottle of wine, and who knows how many cherries later, we arrived. A bit road-ragged, but there. This city was my home for six months about eight years ago. We rode up and down the vaguely familiar and very familiar, and I moved as if in a dream. Unfortunately, our schedule kept us from exploring all of Montpellier's charms, but we were able to enjoy a drink on the famous Place de la Comédie for a while and rest our weary bones before grabbing another train to Lyon

And that is a whole other story.