Nov. 30, 2018: Warsaw at Night

Lonely Planet and multiple other travel guides often describe Warsaw as a misshapen patchwork of the old and the new, of the dull communist concrete and modern western steel, or another combination of this and that which don't seem entirely synergistic or complementary.   But, looking out our hotel window at the Warsaw Spire (second tallest building in Poland), I see something that must have been unimaginable in 1945 -- a thriving, rebuilt, and free Warsaw. 

Oh, and on top of that, the Spire is architecturally stunning. Built by a Belgian real-estate developer, the Warsaw Spire won an award in 2017 for best office and business development in the world.  That's quite a long ways from the dull, depressing, and homogeneously unadorned concrete that dominated the city during the days of Soviet communism. 

Nov. 29, 2018: Flying Lufthansa

If the term "Economy Light" doesn't scare you, it should.   I failed to read the fine print when buying our tickets to Poland and learned the hard way what Economy Light means.  All in all, Lufthansa employees were very polite about enforcing rigid 8 kg weight restrictions on our carry-on bags (as in how much of your clothing are you willing to wear in layers so they actually let you board the plane?), reminding us of the stiff $60 per checked bag fee, keeping us hydrated while we had a close encounter with our knees for ten straight hours in an ever-shrinking coach seat, and stealing all including our jackets when we were seated in exit rows (to create a clear path for even the Jolly Green Giant to exit the plane in an emergency).   I especially appreciated the 360 degree images of the plane on our seat back monitors as it flew over snow-covered countries en route to Europe. Watching the ground below me spin round and round to show off someone's idea of great in-flight graphics made my stomach turn over not once, not twice, but thrice per rotation. 

Nov. 29, 2018: Leaving Seattle

Navigating SeaTac airport for a 2:15 p.m. international flight was almost pleasant, something I never say about my home airport which seems to thrive on pushing the lesser beings on the planet like myself into one mind boggling, super size line at a single checkpoint that winds its way through the airport like a bowl of increasingly frustrated spaghetti.  All while the special people in the world (who pay their monthly fees to be special people) move quickly through one of the four remaining and largely empty security checkpoints. 

But, I digress.   Seattle from the air looks beautiful today, but the photo looks like it has been edited.  If you look closely, there is no traffic jam on I-90 -- a clear indication that someone has tampered with this photo.   

Trails of Tears

Real men don't eat quiche and Real men don't cry.  Despite the fact that both can be healthy and nourishing, real men are encouraged to avoid such inappropriate and pathetic shows of emotion. And, by extension, those who aspire to be as strong as real men regardless of gender should also not cry.  Never.  Ever.  

This belief, squarely off in left field or beyond, persists despite scientific evidence that builds to the contrary.   Crying heals.  Crying releases sadness, grief, anxiety, and frustration.  Crying intensifies feelings of joy and relief.   Crying cleanses pent up negative emotions, preventing them from manifesting as physical illness, discomfort, pain, and disease.   Tears from crying carry stress hormones, eliminating them from the body.  Crying causes breathing and heart rate to drop, enabling the body to enter into a calmer state.  With all these benefits, crying should be a free, accessible, and widely used miracle drug.   

Yet, so many of you hold back the tears anyway.  I am not one of you, in part because when my tears come, they don't seem to respond to my instructions and mandates to do otherwise.  They just come strolling out my eyes, with purpose in hand, bound and determined to release me from whatever grip my emotions have over me. The aftermath, of course, is quite messy. In spite of feeling relieved, calm, destressed, and ready to tackle whatever problem led me to my tears in the first place, I still have to live with puffy, half-closed eyes, breathing through a nose that is one big stuffed up struggle, and whatever make-up issues require immediate renovation.  And, if I dare to look in the mirror and look at what has happened to my face, I may start to cry all over again.  

Despite the buildup and the unfortunate cosmetic aftermath, tears themselves take so many types of trails from where they begin deep inside my heart, through my troubled eyes, and down the sides of my countenance.   Trails of tears are complicated, but each fit of tears seems to have its own journey from start to finish.     

There are tears that issue so spontaneously in a fit of frustration over traffic, a difficult colleague, or an overloaded schedule that there is barely a moment to take cover and hide them from a society that is at best uncomfortable with them and at worst, disparaging.  These trails are easy and ready strolls, like one takes out the front door of a cabin into the nearby woods during a morning of rest and relaxation.   The tears come freely, flow for a brief while, and then stop, leaving a fresh perspective toward whatever frustration inspired them.   

There are tears that lay stuck, refusing to stream forward, building into a stinging pain behind the eyelids before finally eking forward, slowly and painstakingly, each leaving a single trail down the face as a testimony of its character and concern.  These are the tears that emerge from a deeply troubled soul, over tragedy or loss that has no rhyme or reason whether in the inner circle or life or far away in global events.  These trails are won only with difficulty and patience, and their release allows for waking up in the morning with hope and glimpse into a brighter future.  These trails are the last muddy, rocky, impossible stretches above the tree line and upward to the summit of the mountain, where a little bit of rest and a 360 degree view make the arduous ascent more than worthwhile.   

There are tears that come when anger finally breaks into whatever underlies it.  These tears bring more than just physical relief by bursting the dam which held the tension back in a seemingly calm and measured facade.   They bring relief in awareness of what was creating the anger, regret at what damage the anger may have wrought, and determination to do it all better the next time.  These trails are the ones taken when any trail will do, any trail that gets one moving, walking, and working through the aches, pains, and tensions that periodically hamper ordinary everyday movement.   

And the list of trails continues. As life goes on, there seems to be no corner of my often rocky heart, no space inside the forest of my soul that remains unexplored by the simple act of shedding tears.

The Turtle and the Rabbit

One day, a rabbit was looking at himself in the bathroom mirror, admiring himself and boasting (to himself) how fast he could run.  The rabbit did this every morning of every day.  Some might call this behavior narcissistic, but since rabbits generally don't speak using words of more than two syllables, such a label was never applied to this rabbit. 

One day, a turtle happened to be playing splish, splash and taking a bath in the tub that lay within earshot of the boasting rabbit.   While the turtle was still traumatized by being suddenly plucked from his homeland by the ten year old boy living in the house, he still managed to find the rabbit quite annoying.  After listening to the boasting rabbit for awhile, he challenged the rabbit to a race.   At first, the rabbit did not respond, so preoccupied was he with his image in the mirror. The patient turtle (as turtles are prone to be) repeated himself once, then twice, then thrice.

Finally, the rabbit stopped his boasting, considered the turtle's words, then turned around and stared at his rather unwelcome bathroom companion.   At this very moment, the rabbit broke out into great peals of laughter.   The prospect of racing the turtle was sheer lunacy to the rabbit.  Never had the rabbit heard of such a race, much less a mere turtle winning it, because the rabbit, having spent most of his childhood playing video games, had never read any books and didn't know a tortoise from a hare, much less a fable from a short story.  All he knew was that racing this turtle (or any turtle for that matter) would be no competition at all.   The odds were clearly heavily stacked against the turtle in the tub before him, the one still waiting ever so patiently for an answer. 

Though the rabbit was convinced that a race between him and the turtle would be no race at all, he accepted the invitation from the turtle: 

"Yes, yes. We will race."

And so, the urban animals, domestic and feral, came together and mapped out a course through the city for the race.  They hacked into the traffic light cameras to monitor the race, so that the start would be fair to both and the winner at the end would be indisputable.  Bets were laid down, and the usual booking sites were activated.  After grand preparations, race day finally arrived and the race began.

At top speed, the rabbit took off and was soon many city blocks ahead of the turtle.  The rabbit slowed, turned, and could not even see the poor turtle in the distance.   Seeing no harm in doing so, the rabbit took out his cell phone and turned it back on, seeing it as at most a minor distraction that had no chance of changing the outcome of this lopsided race. 

He heard his text notification, clicked, and found a note of encouragement from his friend Energizer.  The rabbit smiled and started to stash his phone in order to continue the race, when...

He heard his snapchat alert, showing him seven new photos from his friend Peter on the bunny trail during the early April morning. The rabbit smiled and started to stash his phone in order to continue the race, when...

He heard his Facebook feed ping, showing another of the latest pictures of the latest bunnies with which his friend Thumper seemed quite twitterpated.   The rabbit smiled again and started to stash his phone in order to continue the race, when....

The next notification came in, causing another squirt of intoxicating dopamine to be released into the rabbit's poor, defenseless brain.  Soon, the dopamine squirting through the rabbit's brain needed no tweet, trill, or bell to keep the rabbit's attention fixated on the phone.  The mere possibility that the phone would emit another sound was enough for the rabbit to remain rooted in place. 

In the meantime, the turtle plodded from city block to city block.  He was wary of dopamine squirts impeding his progress so had left his phone safely stashed in his spare shell at home.   After all, it was hard enough getting somewhere of consequence when one was a turtle; the last thing he needed was trills, tweets, and bells to distract him along the way.   The turtle plodded, slow and steady, as his ancestor the tortoise had, without stopping, making steady progress to the finish line.   Somewhere along the way, he passed the rabbit, but so fixated was the rabbit on his phone, that the turtle passed right on by, entirely unnoticed. 

The sun had set on the parade of onlookers when the turtle finally crossed the finish line.  He turned and waited patiently for the rabbit.  But, the rabbit never came.

Instead, the rabbit just sat at the curb, a mere block from the finish line, waiting, hoping, and waiting for the next notification, the next dopamine squirt to come from his beloved technology.

The End  

One Hundred Pound (or 45 kg) Blankets

One of my favorite parts of Autumn is feeling the nighttime temperatures drop enough to spontaneously drive the blankets out of the closets, chests, and other nooks and crannies where they cleverly hide in the summertime.   As the nights get longer and cooler, the central heating in the house needs help at night, and the blankets pile up on the bed, covering bodies that not so long ago, needed only a sheet to stay comfortable in the night. The layers grow deeper and more complex as the temperatures grow ever colder and Autumn threatens to turn into Winter.  Sweet, warm comfort surrounds me when I crawl under the myriad of covers after the end of a wet, chilly day.  There is no doubt -- the blankets of Autumn offer a cozy sense of security that the twisted sheets that go along with the hot nights of summer simply can't match. 

But, after day after day of chill, month after month of rain, storm after storm, the blankets begin to grow heavier, and not always because there are more of them to keep away the chill in the night.  While they continue to warm, they seem to grow heavier and heavier, until in the last days of the cold months, I feel that I am sleeping under a hundred pounds of blankets.  Such is the weight of nasty weather gone on for too long.  As spring finally pops up out of the ground, I am rarely distressed or delayed in returning the many blankets to their chests, closets, and cubbies until their comfort is needed once again at summer's end.

As I stuff and cram blankets in whatever haphazard storage I have available for them during the summer months, I often reflect on other things in life that can feel like hundred pound blankets --

Church events -- where conversation is a struggle because I seem to have so little in common with others in my congregation. But, comforting nevertheless -- to be around others who strive to serve in this world and honor God in their lives. 

Exercise.  Ugh.  What a weight it is to get up and get moving, adding perspiration and moments out of breath to an already busy and hectic day.  But, the endorphins and good health that follow make for wonderful blankets!

Friendships -- when they become strained by change or other circumstances of life. While it can become complicated to stay in touch, awkward to remain connected, challenging to keep ruffled feathers at bay, they are very much worth crossing rocky waters to reach the calmer ones on the other side of difficult transitions. 

Even relationship with God.  While I am comforted to feel His presence, blessed to feel His love, and desiring to honor His will, I am on occasion (OK... often) weighed down by His (apparent) silence along so many of the steps of life. 

And let's not forget pets -- warm, fuzzy, loving, and always there.   One hundred pounds (per pet, that is) of litter boxes, special foods, vet visits, petsitting dilemmas, bee stings, burrs in the fur, circuses that started out as baths, endless filling of water bowls, and on and on.   But, living without them -- waking up to a house not graced by paws? I don't think so. 

As I get up in the morning and feel the weight of my blankets, I am tempted to throw them off for a lighter day.   But the chill that quickly takes its place reminds me to be grateful.  Given the choice between no blankets and a hundred pound blankets in an often isolated, chaotic, and troubled world,  I choose the blankets!

KJU Prayers & Meditations

I've been a prayer wimp most of my life.   Occasionally, I aspire to be a prayer warrior, waxing eloquent on the needs around me in such a way that my requests and appeals become coherent enough to reach God out there in something infinitely more vast, complex, and jammed in bandwidth than our mere modern cyberspace.

Most unfortunately, my aspirations last for a dismally short period of time and I return to short spurts, car contemplations, or rambling reflections in the middle of the night that make up the bulk of my prayer life.   Part of the problem is that I am genetically related to the Martha of the New Testament, far more focused on doing than being, which makes meditation nothing less than a form of medieval torture in my world.

More seriously, I resist prayer because mine do not often have the flowing eloquence of many of those who stand beside me in church and because I lack true hope in their power.  Like many an American, I secretly believe that God is too busy to listen to me; He surely must have His hands full with all the crazy ugliness going on in our modern world.  Can you imagine counting the hairs on the heads of the seven billion human souls across the globe (Luke 12:7), valuing every single sparrow that flies on the planet along with the billions of other animals in need every day (Luke 12:6), and then still having time in the evening to check an Inbox crammed with the stumbling, scattered ramblings of all of us prayer wimps?   Makes my head spin just thinking about it. 

Like many a Christian, I am also perpetually confused and often discouraged by the prayers that are answered and those that are not, by the suffering that is allowed and that which is subverted, healed, or erased.  If the data (prayers answered, those unanswered, those denied) look random, is not the process random?   Does God just delegate His Inbox to a random number generator, a clever algorithm that provides sometimes but not others?

I do realize that, right now, while I can't see the face of God (Exodus 33:20), if I could, I can imagine Him shaking his head at me -- something I am sure He does quite often. 

I often go down this (prayer wimp) road for quite a long time where I diminish the power of my own individual prayer and (very) effectively paralyze myself and my prayer life. Invariably, though, something will come up, either in my local sphere or in the world news that makes me wonder if God would really listen to a wimp like me:

Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you.

Assisted (mightily) by the Holy Spirit, I'll bite off the hope framed by this verse from Matthew (7:7), and will pray almost mightily for some time.  Prayers for those close by, those whom I know and love, and who happen to love me back, are the easiest of prayers to write, to repeat, and to set on the fabric of my heart.

But, the hardest of all prayers are for those in the world who appear to be evil, uncaring, cold, or otherwise distant from both (true) Christian and my own values.   Dwelling in who they are, learning more about their lives, trying to place myself in their shoes and heart, is hard at a level that extends well beyond my tendency to be lazy in meditation and prayer. 

This seems to be the season in my life though, where I feel even more compelled to learn how to better dwell spiritually with, pray for, and cry for greater joy in the hearts of these people.  It's more often on my heart now to look past what appears evil and try to understand the road to a brighter, lighter life for them and those whose lives they touch.  In moments or on days when I can sincerely pray for those who hurt others, where I can put aside my judgements and truly understand that everyone has equal value before God, I embrace the hope that lives will be transformed and light rather than darkness will begin to ripple outward from the lives of some in the world who seem so well versed in hurting and anger and so less experienced in joy and love. 

These are what I've nicknamed my Kim Jong Un Moments.  I can't say a single word in prayer for some unless I have immense hope that God will hear me, that He has both reason and power to affect change in their lives.  Without hope of that size and expanse, my own heart would start to submerge in the darkness. And for a prayer wimp such as myself, that would be a disaster!

Heavenly Father
Today, my heart travels to North Korea, where tension, anger, power, and unthinkable military action seem to sit at the center of the table.  Although I can't see where change is possible or tenable, I know you see the opening to Kim Jong Un's heart, an opening that can open his eyes to an alternative reality that uses love, care, kindness, and belief in you to create a far greater legacy than what is currently in the plans.  God, please hear my cry.  Only you can draw the eyes of this supreme leader to you, the Supreme Leader, and light the path ahead of him to replace what is in his heart with pure joy, to secure his circle with trust and loyalty, and to fill the people of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea with hope.   

Now, back to my to-do list and my tremendous talent for being a prayer wimp!