Only One Explanation

I felt my wheels twitch as they moved off from the damp pavement to a slushy sheet of snow at 60 mph. Before my mind could tell my hands what to do, they had turned the wheel sharply in an attempt to correct my angling toward the big utility van I was passing.

***

The roads had been pretty decent up until then. Just as I had left Berrien Springs at 2:30 a.m., the snow had tried to smother out my optimism for the seventeen hours ahead of me, but I had passed through the pocket and by the time I was on I-90, heading impatiently toward Vermont, the road was dry in places, wet in others. I was out of Michigan. Through Indiana. Ohio's end was in sight with the snow speckled signs telling me I was 50 miles from Erie, Pennsylvania.

The winds had been gusting around me already for five hours, occasionally bearing snowflakes, and in Ohio, the snowflakes had gotten thicker. I wasn't too worried though. I was heading home.

***

My little Geo Metro, Chuck, had a mind of his own when my hands set him free like that--as if he was suddenly getting me back for the times I've squished four people into his two-seated smallness and stalled him as my left-foot got accustomed to his finicky clutch and forgot to cover his ragtop before it snowed. He was skating all over the road like a whirligig beetle.

And then I saw myself headed straight for the side of the utility van. I remember thinking it wasn't going to be good. I remembering wondering if it would hurt when Chuck's chin and nose would crumple up in front of me and then munch me up too.

And then we hit, Chuck ramming his front into the flank of the white van. My computer on the seat next to me flew into the dash. Chuck was still going, spinning, heading back west on I-90 east, then turning again, completing his antics and wobbly 360 as he knocked himself out with a smash against the guardrail.

***

Before leaving at 2:30, I had knelt down on the brown carpet of my apartment. Usually I'll close my eyes for a few seconds as I sit behind the wheel in preparation for a journey, the words running around quietly in my head. But yesterday morning I needed something more. I needed to hear that prayer be real.

And it was. In the yet-dark hours as I headed out and the stars streaked across the sky. As I sat wedged against the guardrail and found that I was alive and that nothing hurt. And when I looked and found that even the bulb of my broken taillight would continue to glow out behind me--along with the warmth of gratitude within me--for the remaining twelve hours, for the last of the lingering journey, Home.

Seeing, Among Other Things

Ginny Owens sings that she doesn't climb mountains to see the view. I want to sit in my purple chair and stew on that for a few minutes, but she is going on, hardly waiting till she can open her eyes to God's wonderful wonder, His display of great beauty and power. She can't keep from singing.

I can't seem to keep from running these days. All that time, my calves sore, my body ready to plop into bed when I have to stay up late and finish the assignment I couldn't do while I was running. I guess that's predictable, but...

Can Ginny Owens run? Can she climb mountains? How can her feet know where to go even if someone tells her? Can they know each root, each pebble, each ledge slanting away from her and slippery with snow melt?

And why would you hike without a view?

If your heart is singing, I guess that's why. If your faith is seeing, even though you're blind. If your body aches with the burden of God's love blowing the scent of mountains across your face, not merely because you gritted your teeth and made it go.

The Evidence of a Long Time

That frightfully buzzing, biting run
Petered out in a dorm room so many
Seconds ago that my
Computer no longer remembers
I used to visit my blog
Occasionally.

Biathlon

I run the final length of dirt road and plunge into the corn, crawling, the bubbles I stir up with my outstretched arms and hands streaming over me like dew or sweat or pollen, lisping through broad green tongues, "aren't you claustrophobic? Aren't you tired? Aren't you giving up yet?

I emerge, dripping, breathing hard, trying to huff the strength down into my legs, and run onto the wooded path, the wind whistling through the water in my ears as if my arms are taunt, freshly straight behind a skiboat on a wakeboard.

And now my competitors join me fiercely like a herd of deerflies buzzing around me, biting my back, shrieking in my hair, making my face flush brighter, faster, faster. They follow me, undaunted by hills where they crowd around me thicker, hardly lagging as I once again find myself on the dirt road, the paved road, up the last hill.

On the sidewalk my last tenacious contender, in a burst of extinction, rams against me, laughing at the swinging of my arms at her, but daring not enter behind me into the winners circle of study.

Distractions

"They are not quite decent," indeed, "to tell the truth" and to borrow, just for a moment, the words of Jane Kenyon.

Waving to all who peer out into the courtyard, they perch on the best ride in town, the top down, the wind in their hair, their showy white hats blowing about their faces and feathering and silking upward to a brilliant pink tip.

And the way they carry their limbs! Just so, like the male swan, neck curved, pinioned wings gracefully drooped to draw the eye of the lovely female--

I feel I ought to give them a thick bottomed glass and pour them a drink of my very best, sit in their company, lean in to catch the fragrance of their light perfume,

Which I do,

They, resting daintily on the edge and then sliding their slender, brown legs into the very middle, properly bent beneath them at the knee,

Sipping up the sparkling water with their toes.

Sighing with Annie Over One's Slavery to Words

"Many fine people were out there living, people whose consciences permitted them to sleep at night despite their not having written a decent sentence that day, or ever."
--Dillard, The Writing Life, 51

What Some Folks Do

Reed's Automotive has gone out of business. I guess that might have been expected with the numerous little auto shops in St. Johnsbury, an excellent one being right across the street, and several more along that one same stretch of road alone.


Mr. Reed was a nice fellow though--his little, smoke-filled, cluttered waiting room a virtual library of children's books, his grin of a rather contagious grandfather sort, and his elderly hard of hearingness, of his own admission, a help for passing inspections.

But perhaps of greater note to the town, Mr. Reed did car oil undercoating--that sort of robbing Peter to pay Paul thing of protecting your possession to the tune of more oil drips on the road, running down the ditches after a rain, and making its way into our streams and ponds and lakes. And Mr. Reed was the only business of that sort in St. J.

I am conflicted. But what is one to do with the clean underside of a little eighteen-year-old Geo Metro that is valiantly fighting corrosion from the salty winters and the dirt-road-sealing summers of Vermont?

Perhaps it wasn't my idea, but as all twelve feet, six inches of my car passed inspection today with a clean blue streak, and as my mechanic, the guy across the street from Reed's automotive, humphed and gave his approval at the low mileage and the fresh oil undercoating job in need of some good dust, I could only chuckle and heartily agree.

Learning From the Master

I take the old English textbook out of my dusty bookcase and turn to Robert Frost's "Mowing." Scythe...whispered...the heat of the sun...the feeble-pointed spires of flowers...a bright green snake. I expect that he was just as proficient as a mower as he was poet since poetry seems to sprout best out of the simple tasks of life. But as I look out the window at my own work, I know that not even someone tipsy with the exilarating green of a Vermont summer would hire me to scythe their field. It is ragged, vetch and daises torn up along with the grass. And somehow I think that Frost didn't think to mention the sweat trickling down behind the ears to the neck, the deer flies tangling themselves in the curls of hair and buzzing entrapped against the head, the scythe blade that becomes dull too quickly, or the strain felt from the stomach, out to the elbows, and up to the shoulders. And yet I guess that was part of Frost's skill--to not state the obvious unless there was a peculiar way to tell it. I suppose too that is why he only hints at the gracefulness of a practiced scyther like my father, where the whisper and the motion and the waves of falling grass and ferns far out-feel the deer fly biting the arm.



---

I bring the textbook downstairs to the kitchen where the floor wafts up pine-scented amonia and where the counters bear evidence of my supper plans. My parents haven been spending a few precious days in celebration of thirty years together, and now I have one quiet hour to spend out by the pond while my grandmother is visiting her sister. Earlier this morning as I misted water over her head and picked out her permed curls and then as the extra water slipped into her eyes and I had to bring her a towel to wipe them, I couldn't help wondering at the way we have swapped our roles--unwillingly perhaps at first, but now in some sort of secure acceptance. Not that many years ago she might have been bathing me, a baby small enough to sit in her large kitchen sink, she carefully watching that the shampoo didn't get in my eyes. Or perhaps when I was a little older she might have knocked on the bathroom door to make sure I didn't need help, like I do now for her, or take me for a walk on the old road behind her house or down to the bridge to feed the river, I having to trust that she knew where we was going. And she was the one trying to keep me dry when it started to rain.



---

The English I taught in Honduras was an English that a good many people could teach. The muddy mile I walked each day was a mile that most could walk. The electricityless, laundry-hand-washing life was a life that a number of folks could live. But I suppose I need not state the obvious so commonlike... I guess the point is that I had something to work on in Honduras. It is kind of like our part in the plan of Redemption. If efficiency was all that mattered, God would be much better off doing the work Himself. And yet He has given us the opportunity to experience His servanthood, to experience the simple moments of life freshly, poetically, to experience new thoughts about the people around us and the love to be passed on.

Christ was a servant, the True Servant, bending down to clean the dust-covered callouses and the dirty toenails, allowing the lepers to approach Him and kneel at His feet, healing the grandmothers, the aunts and uncles, the children. And that's something to keep learning, in Honduras, yes, but in the field, in the home, and ever.

Small Snatches

The laundry room

Maria and Mariella, dressed for a birthday party

The moment of the pinada

A lonesome fellow just past our gate

Encouragement on the ridge

A full larder

Manuela and the mountains

More mountains

The old Toyota that you can start with the storage room key

Typical plant around here--no, I do not know it's name

Represented here, a portion of our team, are Belize, Venezuela, Switzerland, Honduras, Costa Rica, and the United States.

Honduran mountains from a nice rocky ledge about a 30 minute walk from campus

Teammates Jacob and Eli--an interesting conversation

Waiting for the master bathing in the creek

Our classroom/chapel and "the plaza" of morning and evening worship

Currently my classroom, but each Sabbath, our church

The team--students and staff. Yes, there are many more women than men!

A Sunday Thought: In the Company of Puppies

Again and again in the Bible we are told that we are like sheep going astray and I do not try to correct this image--but somehow I think that we are also a great deal like stubborn puppies.

Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego are Honduran dogs, born and raised here, three brothers as different in personaliity as they are in color. For at least three months they have been at IBC in an environment of doggy heaven--food, love, walks--and yet, just as we have the effects of sin still in our physical bodies, these puppies are products of their environment. They constantly fight among themselves, they strongly dislike children and cars and bicycles, they destroy chew up anything that is left within their reach.

As I look at them, I see how much they have grown. They are learning to stay in the areas that are theirs. They are learning not to chase cars. They have learned that they can't accompany anyone in a skirt or dress pants. And they are learning to come a whistle.

In Jeremiah 10:8 God says that He will whistle and that His people will come running. And yet I I am amazed at how we, like these puppies, are constantly distracted--by a donkey in the pasture, a rock rolling down the hill, a mound of cow manure. Do they want to obey? Do we want to obey? Well, maybe here is where the metaphor breaks down. Perhaps they don't. But whether their training tells them to come or not, or whether we want to heed the gentle voice of our master or not, there is always the deeper instinct telling us to return to our "doghood" and to our "vomit."

"Who shall free us from this body of death?" Who can overcome battles with temperance, with low self-esteem, with selfishness? "Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord," we are not left as wretched puppies, eating the hides and guts of a butchered steer. We are children of the King, through His strength set free from the law of sin and death.

A Sabbath Reflection from Some Weeks Ago: Under a Tree

As we walked back from the primary school, talking and chuckling at the fact that we were conversing in Spanish, we heard the cheery voice, "Buenas dias, hermanas" from up ahead of us. After looking around we saw hermano Manuel sitting on the edge of the raod, in the shade of a large fragrant tree. He had come to enjoy the sunshine of a beautiful morning, and he had come to find peace. "Ah, hermano, tu estas como Natanael!" I said as we passed on, leaving him with a smile on his face.

Later the same day, but cooked up to a roasting heat, I stood by the dormitory, waiting to get the church key from one of our team members. As I felt the sweat beginning to trickle down my back, I heard myself saying, "I shall wait under the mango tree" and in that moment, as the perfume from the blossoms surrounded me, I thought again of Nathaniel and the fig tree and Manuel on the side of the road.

Micah 4:4 reads "But they shall sit every man under his vine and under his fig tree, and none shall make them afraid: for the mouth of the LORD of hosts has spoken it."

It seems then that the fig tree is more than a symbol of peace, more than a symbol of God's abundance, and more even than a symbol of contentment. Under the fig tree is a place of searching and spiritual revival and reconnection with God.

Even now as I sit between two rocks, a pine against my back, a good half-hour walk from IBC, I read these words and find comfort. I came here for refreshment, for peace, for the filling of a longing deep down. I have been waiting all week to find it, and now, my books on my lap, I have found it as I look out across the mountains of Honduras, at the edge of a valley, under a tree.

Introductions

Looking out the gate of Buena Vista

View of Buena Vista from a ridge behind campus (El Suyutal is on the far left side of the picture)

and a mountain view further up the ridge.

The hallway of the building I am currently staying in and walking out our road toward the village of El Suyutal

The donkey who brays every morning and the toads who don't appreciate it when we water our garden beds

Meshach (white), Abednego (black), and Shadrach

Nina (on left) and Mia; Adam and Eve

To Be or Not to Be (As If It Makes a Difference to Choose)

I do believe that my cheeks and arms and legs are a bit ruddier than they were two weeks ago. And I know for a fact that I understand more Spanish and can produce more than I could on my first nervous night in Tegucigalpa some time ago. But somehow these things make no dint on the hard-coating of Americanism that encases me.
---
I hear Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego barking and look up from my lesson plans to see cattle passing by our gate, a Honduran rider behind them. I think of my neighbors in VT, their calloused hands waving hello, and their voices calling their howling pets away from my horse. I think of the inconvenience of those creatures that don't obey and that have followed me home, and then I whistle and call the the boys. But the rider and cattle pass by, and the dogs do not return until the last steer lumbers by.
---
In the darkness of the room I do not see the kind senora leaning forward to kiss my cheek and I want to pinch myself for forgetting the custom. I don't generally eat dairy products and I am not very hungry, but I accept the maiz with mantequilla and the yucca that she gives me. "Muy rico," I say, and I mean it, but I don't know if she believes me.
---
As I walk through El Suyutal, I feel the eyes surrounding me and when my companion says softly, "Muy rapido, muy rapido," my legs are only too happy to comply. Without noticing, I am soon ahead of her. She chuckles, but in her voice I hear the tightness that I feel in my own throat.
---
I ring the bell as I finish preparing "almuerza" for the rest of the team and for the two workmen. This week we have had white rice and beans and tortillas and curry and bread and so my Swiss friend and I have decided to be brave and branch out. She cooked brown rice, and I have just finished making an Asian-style stir-fry with some soy sauce I found in our little kitchen. We have already agreed that we will watch and see if any second helpings get taken, and in a half-hour we are back in the kitchen, giggling, as we look at the scanty remains of the big meal we prepared. At least this went over better than my split-pea and fresh vegetable soup...
---
As I finish leading out in the final hymn of our prayer meeting, I move amongst the brothers, wishing them a good night, and then begin helping pick up the chairs. Tonight, like other nights, a brother relieves me of my stack with an almost chiding "Emily..." Well, I say to myself, that may be all the English they know--but then again, haven't I noticed that only the women from Buena Vista ever help to pick up, not the women of the village?
---
To be, or not to be? I ask again. Do I continue to visit the ridge for quiet time in the mornings, despite the fact that it would not be good were I to be found out their alone? Do I carry a camera so as to preserce the experiences I encounter and at the same time advertise the fact that I might be a "turista americana?" But then again, it seems that whether I choose to be or not, there is the height, and the pale skin, and the blue eyes to betray me

Simpler Things

I have a blister on my little finger from washing towels. If you had told me about such an occurance a mere nine days ago, I would have chuckled and said such a thing was not possible. But now I know the truth--yesterday's bout with the washboard and our kitchen's thirty-some "toallas" was enough to cure me of my laughter... in one sense. On the other hand, after an afternoon with my body half in the sunshine and half in the cool washing water, I am that much more delighted.

I cannot tell you how many times already I have walked into the room I (will) share with four others after dark and unconsciously begun feeling around for the lightswitch, or thought pleasantly of a warm shower and then scrunched up my face in anticipation of the cold running down my back. But it is only habit that makes me do so. Tonight as I showered, squealing, by lamplight, I found myself chuckling at the unique experience, and chattering about it with my co-teacher Manuela over the thin walls of our abode.

And so time and I march on--I often with either a little green "perrico" or a dishtowel on my shoulder and a garbled Spanish sentence in my mouth, I often thinking of how wasteful I have learned to be, how careless I am, and how ignorant of many things. Perhaps four and some months will teach me somethings. But then I shall only be eager to learn more.

Buena Vista

My arrival at Buena Vista on Monday, my home for the next five months, was a celebration of more than merely seeing the place I have waited so long to see... it was a breath of tranquility after a long and curvy, jouncy and wild ride from Tegucigalpa past bony animals and over pot-holed roads, along with two clutch starts due to battery failure, an empty stomach, and a parched throat from a mere cup-and-a-half of water in some twelve hours.

My journal entry last night said dia quatro at the top of it--so yes, now that I am on my third full day here at the school, I feel as if I can tell a little.

Buena Vista is beautiful indeed and as was told me from the beginning, is set in a little valley surrounded by grand green hills. Yes, of course showers are cold. No, we do not have electricity. Yes, we are on winter vacation until February and I therefore have a little more of a chance at working out the Spanish chatter of the few staff around me before my English classes begin.

It is quiet here, oh so quiet, fifteen minutes away from the bustling little village of El Suyutal, and therefore protected from all but the braying of donkeys and the crowing of roosters from various places around campus. The slower-paced Honduran lifestyle has my eyebrow quizzically angled at one moment and my heart leaping in delight at another... everything is all so new.

This evening five of us trooped out to the village for an evening prayer meeting where I was once again reminded of how American I am. I have taken so much for granted. Here our church is a roof with three walls, a cement-pad floot. But truly, the hearts and hands are so warm, even to a tall white girl who stumbles so badly when asked where she is from that she says, "I am Vermont." And then I have so often taken for granted the kinship of a conversation where every detail is understood, at least in word. This evening I stood in the center of a jolly group of church folks, smiling and nodding at all the appropriate places and catching the general drift...but I must remember that it has only been five days...

Oh, there is so much to say... about new friends, about our dogs and cats and parrots, about lonliness, about mealtimes and cooking, about the rats in the storeroom, about hikes, about lesson plans... But oh, the time is short. Someday too, pictures will be coming, friends.

I continue to be amazed at how God is blessing and how I have the assurance of His strength. Each day I am reminded that I am not here of my own accord, but that He has placed me here, and that it with His power that I will do the task before me. It is enough--or rather, the crowning cap on my joy.