two years later

Two years ago in middle August I flew to San José, Costa Rica and spent a week with my good friend Stefán, who had moved there some ten months before. Sometimes we have a memory in our heads that just doesn't fade, it holds true just as if it had happened yesterday. Sometimes this is a bad thing, other times it is a good thing.

This time, it is a good thing.

One of Stefán's classmates, Evelio, and Evelio's girlfriend, Jennifer, joined Stefán and me early one morning and we boarded a bus to travel to the beach. San José is in the middle of the country, and the beach is about three hours through beautiful mountains. The weather there can often be quite different from the weather inland. When the four of us got off the bus, it was like a scene from a comedy. A Dominican, a Colombian, a Caymanese, and a United Statesian all standing there in our flip flops with towels in the pouring rain—looking dejected as the bus drove away.

Undaunted, we sat ourselves down in an open-air cafe and ordered coffee and lunch while the rain never stopped on the tin roof. This was truly one of the simplest and most enjoyable memories I have from my week in Costa Rica, and this is the memory that won't fade, thank goodness:

Evelio, Colombian, spoke very little English. I, from the United States, spoke very little Spanish. Stefán, Dominican, and Jennifer, from the Cayman Islands, were both completely fluent in both languages. Most of our conversing was translated with ease and was hardly noticeable. However, at one point Evelio wanted me to work on my Spanish so he decided to tell me a story in Spanish. I was following fairly well until he got excited about his story and stopped speaking slowly. As the confusion crept across my face, he stopped and said to me, in Spanish, "If you get lost, just put your hand up and wave at me." Not understanding, I nodded, and Jennifer and Stefán erupted in laughter. Evelio and I, having no concept of what was so funny, starting laughing hysterically at their laughter. Finally, Jennifer and Stefán choked out (in English) what Evelio had said in Spanish and then explained to Evelio that if he tells me in Spanish to stop him when I don't understand, that I'm not going to understand what to do when I don't understand. I think we laughed for minutes on end. I remember wiping tears from my eyes and clutching my belly. It was such a good laugh. It may not even sound funny at all in the retelling, but it Makes. My. Day. when the memory steps to the front of my brain.

a moment of speaking

It is a rare treat indeed to get a little bit chilled while outside in August, but today I got that pleasure. I've always remembered fondly our cooler summers, simply for the ease of being outdoors in creation with the air being comfortable against my skin. The summer of 2004 was nice; I spent the evenings after work sitting in the hammock reading book after book. In South Carolina, the summer of 1997 was cool. It was the summer before I graduated college, and we lived in this huge house (a whole lot of us) by the lake, and it had a tire swing. I would go outside and let my mind wander (there is much going on in the brain of someone near graduating college, so much that it's almost debilitating—gave me an ulcer, in fact), would sit in that swing and sing songs like What If We Went To Italy under my breath.

Today was no less beautiful. It was morning, and I'd just been to the gym. I'm lucky and my job requires reading, and there are no requirements as to where that reading needs to take place. So in my running shorts I sat underneath a tree in a park and read, stopping intermittently to marvel at the fact that I get to live such a life. Two women passed on the walking trail, each holding a dog on leash, and one asked the other if their dogs could meet. "We've just taken a second training class," she said, and the other one obliged. The dogs sniffed each other and one of the ladies touched the other one's dog on the head. They laughed and the dogs danced and it occurred to me that these are the moments in life that are the important ones. Not by any means the most important, but beautiful and meaningful in a way that our culture doesn't substantiate. I guess a better way to say it would be that these are the moments that our culture tells us are secondary; peripheral. But I would argue that they are primary; central. At the least, one would have to agree that these moments are tantamount with any other moment we may experience in a life, equal if not in purpose at least in beauty.

I probably won't forget it, that is easy to say. I felt like grace and love dripped from it as grace and love drip from most moments.

Frederick Buechner says, "It seems to me that if God speaks to us at all in this world, if God speaks anywhere, it is into our personal lives that he speaks. Someone we love dies, say. Some unforeseen act of kindness or cruelty touches the heart or makes the blood run cold. We fail a friend, or a friend fails us, and we are appalled at the capacity we all of us have for estranging the very people in our lives we need the most. Or maybe nothing extraordinary happens at all—just one day following another, helter-skelter, in the manner of days. We sleep and dream. We wake. We work. We remember and forget. We have fun and are depressed. And into the thick of it, or out of the thick of it, at moments of even the most humdrum of our days, God speaks."

Perhaps it was just a moment of God speaking. This world, this life, these people we share it with—that God notices it all in its uniqueness and is delighted by it enough to keep it running every day.

best line of the day

"Aw man. I got flour on my onion." —Ryan

a year ago today

Last year I wrote this. It's funny how we get in a rhythm of seasons, and how what was so pertinent last August is equally pertinent this year. It's comforting. Here's a peek into last August ...

I have to say, I think that the older I get, the more I realize I haven’t gotten anything figured out. About this world; about this life. That’s a good thing though, it keeps me having a sense of wonder. I’m very glad that God is in charge instead of me, because there are way too many moving parts for me to keep up with, even in my own small story—let alone the larger, comprehensive story. I’ve been listening to and talking about a lot of things that are sad—our own brokenness and how it all intertwines and causes hurt, mostly. But in all the melancholy, there is a beauty. There seems to be this golden thread throughout all the brokenness in this world ... a golden, burning thread that is holy. Perhaps it’s simply God’s touch, since we and all that we experience and gaze upon was (and is being) created by a holy God. It seems to me that this thread is what holds us together—makes us a people instead of billions of separate persons. It’s this thread that puts the “kind” in “mankind”, reminding us that even though we are separate, individual and unique men and women, we each have a spark of holy in us being that God gave us what we call a “spirit” in the English language. And I believe that when that spark (our spirit, soul, whatever you wish to call it—the thing that makes me ... me) connects with God’s Spirit (Holy Spirit, Holy Ghost), it finds its source and flares, becomes a fire. And we feel it. We usually use the phrase, “becoming more fully alive,” or such. It’s a soaring freedom and a strong, comforting anchoring at the same time. It’s the place where we realize that we are real (not an illusion), intentional (with a specific purpose), and beloved (perhaps our most organic need). It’s the moment in which we are intensely thankful for our existence instead of stubbornly apologizing for it.

Recently I read Gilead by Marilynne Robinson, and I fell in love with these words: In every important way we are such secrets from each other, and I do believe that there is a separate language in each of us, also a separate aesthetics and a separate jurisprudence.

That is just absolutely beautiful to me. It’s so true. Our individual perspective is so unique to each of us, yet here we are, all together, and somehow we manage to love each other. I think it’s that golden thread that allows us that. We are all moving separately, oftentimes not even hearing the same music, but somehow it becomes a dance.

while watching the olympics

Jordanne: "You know that in some of the first Olympics they competed naked?"

Natalie: "Do you think we can find that on YouTube?"

best one-liner of the week

So every year in the summer, our church (where I work) does this deal called Ozark Family Adventure, or OFA. It's like summer camp, but for families. And our summer interns go along to help out the parents and play with the kids. It's a blast—games in the pool, water skiing, tubing, miniature golf—fun.

On the last day, right after the pool party and right before lunch, we all sit around in the main room and "download" together. All the kids and interns are seated on the floor with the parents sitting in chairs in a half-circle around them. People start talking about beautiful interactions they've seen over the past week, or thanking specific people for specific things. Parents usually are really moved by the way a particular intern has really loved on one of their kids, or interns are really moved by the way they see a particular family interacting with each other, or a kid will stand up and thank an intern or their parents. It's actually a pretty emotional and beautiful time.

Well, yesterday we were in the middle of this, and some people had even been brought to tears as they stood up and talked about the love they'd seen from afar or experienced firsthand. One of our interns, Matt, started to speak. He was being very vulnerable and heartfelt when the 3-year-old boy that was sitting in his lap let out a very loud fart. It was the funniest thing in the world. Everybody lost it—a hundred and twenty people in wet swimsuits and towels just dying laughing.

Literally two minutes later, a mom was sharing about how thankful she was for the week, and a kid two seats over farted equally loudly on his mom. As everyone was pulling it together for a second time, Tom (the guy heading this whole OFA thing up) got up on stage and said, "I hope this isn't like yawning. Like it's contagious and we all have to do it until it's out of our systems."