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.



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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.



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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.