Beauty

There is so much beauty in this world.  I see it in people, and in the creativity that flows from them.  In sounds.  On pages.  In nature.  There's beauty in the way a mama talks to her child, there's beauty in the sound of the wind.  I see it when she smiles at him.  I hear it with the words, "i love you, mom."  I feel it in the arms of my husband wrapped around me.  


I know beauty.  It comes on wings.  It rests a while.  It fades. It remains, though flickering.  Beauty: I see it in a child's eyes, in the grasping of tiny fingers around a papa's. 


I see beauty in the imperfect and in the crooked.  In the plain, in the grand.  Beauty comes in many forms.  Artful, soulful expression.  It comes from within, from without.  


Even ugly can be beautiful.  When He takes the pain, the sadness, the hurt and he makes something new with it.  Beauty from ashes.

This is an amazing work, so loving and tender.  The 'work' is happening before one can see it.  It is deep.  It is still dark while the breath of life is being breathed.  This breath is alive, holy.  So still it is at times... imperceptible.  Isaiah 61 tells me that The Spirit of the Sovereign Lord is upon me.  To proclaim this good news, and to provide for those grieving, to bestow on them a crown of BEAUTY instead of ashes, the oil of joy instead of mourning, and a garment of praise instead of a spirit of despair.  This is incredible because the ugly is not yet beautiful.  But He knows it will be.  It will be.   He provides for me and you in grief.  And He takes our ashes and gives us crowns of BEAUTY.  And then.  Then, as He wills, the ashes turned beauty touch another's life.  

I want to be a reflection of His beauty.  

Carry on... it's only rain!

People who live in the UK do not take the rain seriously.  Rain is the run of the mill, to be expected, nothing to get flustered about (or even mention) kind of weather. Wellies and umbrellas are optional.  Most people just carry on walking, cycling, or pushing their baby carriages maybe at a bit quicker of a pace.  

As I was walking home today, I approached an elderly gentleman on his way to somewhere and we both peeked out of our umbrellas to see which side of the sidewalk the other intended to pass on when he said to me, "It's a proper umbrella day, isn't it?" I smiled and agreed and thought to myself that any sort of drips from the sky is a "proper umbrella day" for me.

Weather is a funny thing here.  The other day Jeff and I walked to pick up Max from school and by the looks of the sky there was no threat of rain, but by the time we got there, it was literally raining, blowing and snowing gigantic snowflakes.  Thankfully it was a Tuesday, which meant that the café across the street in St. Peter's church was open.

Every Tuesday people from the village of
Wolvercote volunteer their time to work in the café.

We ran inside for cover and ate scones and drank tea until the weather became bearable to walk home in.   Olivia and Luke take a city bus home from school every afternoon, and sadly, on this particular day their bus was 30 minutes late!  They were frozen and dripping wet when they finally arrived home.  Their umbrellas and even the bus shelter did little to keep them dry as the wind blew the rain right into the shelter. It was a great night to start up our first fire in the fireplace.  I have a feeling we'll be doing a lot of fire building this winter just to keep the chill off.  I'm already counting down the days until spring!

Late to the Party

Carol Services are in abundance at this time of year in England.  Every church, it seems, is advertising their carol service with an attractive lure of free mulled wine and mince pies afterward. I really wanted to take in one of these this year, so I put an alarm on my phone reminding me.... 6:00 p.m. Sunday, December 18, Carol Service, St. Aldates.

It was 3:45 p.m. and Jeff and I were doing our big grocery shop for the week.  I assumed we had loads of time, but the announcement came over the loudspeaker that the store would be closing in 15 minutes. I don't shop quickly.  I need two hours to grocery shop, especially when I'm meal planning as I walk the aisles.  When the announcement came, we hurried to put everything we could into the 'trolley' and dashed for the checkout.  We bagged our groceries and headed for the car.  As we were waiting for the windows to de-fog my alarm went off reminding me of the carol service I had completely forgotten about.  We called the kids and told them to get ready because we'd be leaving as soon as Jeff and I got home.  We waited for record time at the bus stop (buses aren't as frequent on a Sunday night) and got to the service 15 minutes late.  It was a capacity crowd and people were stuffed all the way to the doors in the narthex.  We couldn't even see into the auditorium.  I happened to know that this service was going to be a long one (though we kept that information from the kids) and Jeff and I looked at each other thinking we should just turn around and go back home.  Right at that moment, an usheress (is that what you call a female usher?) spotted us in our dilemma and told us that she could seat us at the front on the floor if we'd like.  She assured us there were "loads" of people doing the same thing.  We both curled our lips at the thought of walking in front of hundreds of people and being seated in front (on the floor, no less) but after debating for a second, decided to go for it since we'd come this far.  

What we didn't realize is that we would be sitting FRONT and CENTER on the floor. Yes, that's right.... we walked in 15 minutes late and got prime seating, just inches from the stage and even closer to the advent wreath with four burning candles.  There were a few others on the floor as well, but they all seemed to be tucked neatly off to the sides of the stage.  The older kids looked at Jeff and I like they were going to kill us the first chance they got. What they failed to understand is that at that moment we, too, felt like our teenage selves just wanting to drop through an escape door in the floor.  I especially felt badly for the people we were directly in front of who had likely gotten to church early to get such a special seat.  There was lots of sitting and standing repeated by more sitting and standing throughout Bible readings, prayers and songs.  I think we all just wanted to not be so visible.  

Although I was initially so distracted by embarrassment, as the service unfolded I began to feel God's peace landing on me like a blanket.  The joy in the room was pulsing, God's presence- palpable.  We were so close to the center of it all... the flickering candles, the orchestra, the voices and the joyful expressions on faces... that it was impossible not to sense the nearness of God, Emmanuel.  He was right there with us, in our midst, dwelling among us.  It began to seem as though this seat on the floor near the altar was not an inconvenience or an accident after-all.  This service was exactly what our spirits needed.  As Jeff and I were talking afterwards, he said, "it felt like we were late to the party, yet, still we were given the best seat." 

Isn't that just like God... even though we are all 'late to the party,' or 'a day late and a dollar short' at times, he doesn't mind.  He doesn't treat us differently or reprimand us. He doesn't turn us away at the door.  He welcomes us in and bids us closer, closer until we can feel his heartbeat.  

The Graduate Wives

Last night I remembered at 6:05 that I'd been invited to a 7:00 dinner for graduate wives.  I met one of the  women through her blog, The Graduate Wife, but hadn't actually met in person.  Feeling unsure about yet one more event where I was the newbie, I quickly called a new friend to see if she'd like to come along. We made a quick plan and in 10 minutes I was out the door.  Right before I left Olivia said, "didn't I hear you say this was a "heels" event?"  I told her it was, but I was comfortable just the way I was and didn't really want to change.  She told me that my shirt (which was plaid) "just says...... country.  I think you should change your shirt at least." Which I did.  How can I have my 14 year old daughter giving me fashion advice and then not take it?  But it didn't stop there.  She said now my shirt really didn't go with my jeans and "do you have a darker wash of jeans?"  Which I did, so I put them on.  I put my boots on (which counts for heels) and she wrinkled up her mouth and said, "well, it's not the greatest, but it'll work."

I met up with Joy and we walked to Noodle Nation to eat dinner with 8 strangers which felt more like friends.  It was the first time I'd been with this many Americans for months.  As we talked, someone else was lamenting the fact that it gets dark at 3:30 in England during the winter so I told this story:  the day after the time change several weeks ago, I had a massive headache so I took a nap in the afternoon.  When I woke up at 4:45, the street lamps were on and the moon was bright and high in the sky.  I immediately started to cry.  The thought of the sun leaving me so early in the day was too much for me to take that day.... and the next.  When I finished telling the story, one of the girls said, "Can I ask you a strange question?  Is your husband doing the OCCA course at Wycliffe?"  (He is.)  She told me that her husband had come home the other day from work and told her that he'd had lunch with these really cool people (those people were Jeff and I) and they should really get together with them.  Now here's that story:  I was still crying about the sun going down way too FREAKING! early when Jeff called to see if I wanted to meet him for lunch.  This was a rare opportunity so I gladly threw my shepherd's pie in the trash and ran out the door.  We went to a little shop on North Parade, just a little ways down from his school.  Behind us in line was the guest professor who'd just taught Jeff's morning class.  He ordered his food in another language then asked if we'd like to eat together.  It was one of those moments that just wasn't an accident.   He and his wife are American and have been in Oxford for a couple years doing research and teaching.  We felt encouraged as we listened to him talk.  It wasn't just one thing he said, it was more like the feeling that God was giving a little more shape and definition to our story.  So anyway, at this lunch we talked about the sun going down so early and I told him my story of waking up at 4:45 in the dark and promptly crying and he smiled knowingly then told us "When you live in England, you just have to learn how to do dark.  Do you ballroom dance?"  He went on to give us lots of other ideas (not that we'll have time for any of them)... although I wouldn't mind giving ballroom dance a try.  Most of the colleges here have beautiful ballrooms and you can take lessons at many of them.  Now the story goes back to Noodle Nation... so this girl told me that when her husband told her about these really cool people they should get together with, he also told her the story of the girl waking up in the dark and crying (me).  It was the second time she'd heard the same story in a matter of two days, so she just had to ask.  So... we met the husband, and a few days later, we met his wife. The coolest part is that they live right across the street from Max's school, so we look forward to getting together.  

The night at Noodle Nation was great, hearing others' stories, laughing and just feeling connected. Being away from everyone I love has really caused me to think again about how important relationships are and how good it is to feel "known" by someone.  It has been strange being the foreigner, being in a land where all this stuff we find weird is actually completely normal to these people and WE are actually the weird ones. People are carrying on with their lives as normal.  Because of the transient nature of Oxford, locals are used to people coming and going all the time.  They may be carrying on as usual with friends and schedules and routines and may hardly notice that I am a fish out of water.  There are fish flopping everywhere, so paying attention to one special fish is not on their agenda.  It has caused me to think about my desire to be known and I can't help but think that we all have this desire.  But what do you do when you can't make it happen?  As much as we crave human love, we actually have a love that is much more steady and unchanging.  Being in Ohio in the same neighborhood, church, schools and with the same people for 10 years, I understood my relationship with God in that context.  It may seem strange, but when we arrived in Oxford I had to realize that although everything around me is different, my God is not.  He is completely unchanging.  He is the same.  He's still my provider and my comforter.  He still speaks to me (with an American accent).  He is deep and abiding.  I am still learning this.  For the first few weeks here, everything felt jumbled up and upside down, like we were Dorothy and little Toto caught in a tornado and had landed in a foreign place.  It has taken some time to to re-orient, to get our bearings.  But I am grateful to be learning that He is the same God for us here in Oxford as he was for us in Westerville.  He's the same God for you at home and at work and at the store as He is for you at church.  He's the same God for all of us as He is in the Bible. Those crazy stories we read are not a fairy tale.  I know we know that, but we don't act like it.    He really did put spit on people's eyes and heal broken bones and hearts. He touched the unlovely.  He made them feel known.  Sometimes we remove ourselves from the narrative of scripture because we just don't see ourselves in the pages.  We forget that He came to put his healing spit on our spiritual eyes so we can see.  He came to break off our bondages and release us into a life of freedom.  He longs with persistent desire to heal our hearts and our bodies.  He touches the unlovely, them and me and you.  He makes us feel known.  And being known tends to change your life.  

Christmasy Things

Last Saturday night we were invited to a small gathering of people to celebrate the season with mince pies and mulled wine (not 'mold wine' as the boys thought).... a very British tradition.  Mulled wine is red wine mixed with various spices, served warm, and mince pies are small sweet pies with a spicy raisin and sultana filling.  Kids played games by the fire while the adults mingled.  It was a nice time talking with new people and doing things 'their way.'

  

Max's class at school was invited to be in the Christmas parade in Oxford.  This involved making lanterns out of willow branches.  The kids sat and 'worked' the willows very gently for quite a long time before they were ready to be made into heart shapes. After the willows were assembled and taped together, a thick tissue paper and glue and colors were slapped on to make a festive lantern.  

The streets were chock a block

Some lanterns were quite elaborate

He might deny it, but Max was very proud of his work

Each year our  family drives to the same cute little Christmas tree lot looking for the perfect tree that will make our christmas feel 'just right.'  This is always a together event and everyone has their say about what kind of tree they want.  We drink hot chocolate and warm our hands by the fire as the tree is being cut, wrapped and tied to the top of the van.  This year, in keeping with the theme of doing things differently, I hopped in the (very small) car with someone I barely know and went to pick out a tree at a hardware store while everyone else was at school because it was my only chance.  It was not a hard choice to make since all the trees were pre-wrapped.  I picked the family tree in record time and helped shove it into the (very small) car through the back of the trunk (which is called a 'boot'), past the baby and into the front seat.  The tree sat on the porch for a few days as Jeff was busy finishing up the term, giving me time to hunt down a saw to cut the end off with.  It wasn't until Sunday that we cut the wrapping off and drug it in the house to see what our 'mystery tree' looked like.  It turned out to be a beautiful tree.  We turned up the music and pulled out the decorations that my dear friends sent for my birthday.  What made the tree extra special was the popcorn and cranberries that the kids had been stringing together for a couple of weeks.   

Max didn't know that popcorn could even be popped this way!

Max was happy that his string of popcorn and cranberries was longer than him

Follow Along With Me

I went shopping this morning at TK Maxx (yes that's the UK version of TJ Maxx) with my friend who lives in the cemetery down the street from our house.  As we were heading home, I had no idea where we were, as is usually the case when I ride in the car with anyone here.  But about 10 minutes into the drive I started recognizing things and asked Helen if she would mind just dropping me off.  My idea was to wind my way through Oxford streets and eventually catch a bus home.  Here is my day after that:  I got dropped off here (a street I was not familiar with)

and turned onto Holywell Street...

I stopped in a tiny sandwich shop and ordered my sandwich but had to leave since they didn't take cards and I rarely have cash on me.  There was so little room to stand in there.... I counted 14 guys (not a single woman) in that little shop shouting out their regular orders.  I travelled on and saw this little lane on the left and decided to follow it.  

Tiny passageway after another, I landed at the Turf Tavern

It was full of students drinking a pint on their last day of term.  I couldn't find a single seat...so off I went, again.  The University of Oxford has a long tradition of academic dress and especially at end of term during exams, you will see students riding their bikes with tails flapping in the wind.  

Still looking for a place to eat, I came upon the Turl Street Kitchen, jammed (again) with students and locals.  

I stood in line for ages waiting for a table (I was determined to eat here).  Finally, a man asked me to follow him to my table.  It was a table for 4 and he explained to me that I would be sitting with some other people.  He quickly left and returned with a couple who had been standing behind me in line.  The girl had just been given a bouquet of flowers by her man.  When the host brought the couple to "my" table and explained that they would be sitting with me, I could see the perplexity (that I was also feeling) in the girls' eyes.  I imagined she was on a date with this man she's in love with and hardly wanted a perfect stranger at their table.  I didn't want to be there any more than they wanted me there, so I got up, smiled at the girl and told her that they could have the table.  The host thanked me and led me to another table... where 4 other people were already sitting.  I should tell you at this point that this was a normal sit down restaurant.... like the kind that you would normally sit at a table with just the people you came with.  I guess since I'd come alone, this was creating problems. Anyway, I sat at the end of the long table with four other people and moments later, two students approached me and asked if I minded if they sat with me.  Sure, why not?  They introduced themselves as Tom and Micky.  When a table opened up behind them with a more spacious sitting area, they "hoped I wouldn't be offended", and took their belongings and moved.  Again, I was by myself at the end of the table of four strangers.  Until... another girl (who was also alone) was seated across from me. Our feet met under the table and we squirmed uncomfortably.  We were confused (understandably) by the waiter for being together as the order was being taken and the bills were delivered.  The girl and the girl sat in silence eating.  One studying, one reading.  

After lunch I went upstairs to a little shop that was full of interesting things and people... and pets.    People bring their dogs everywhere here... pubs, libraries, shops.  I heard a lady talking to what I thought was her kid saying things like, "don't touch that, be good, calm."  I looked up and realized it was her dog she was talking to.  This is the dog going for some handmade mittens that were in reach... and being reprimanded after successfully knocking them on the floor.  

 And now being told how to act in the store....

It is commonplace to see all sorts of street performers in Oxford, some good, some not so good and some genius.  There is a couple that frequently sings and usually attracts a good crowd, a violinist who plays while walking on a tightrope, all sorts of musicians, jugglers, poets, gymnasts and even Michael Jackson acts.  But today I saw my favorite one yet.  A man playing the piano and singing.  But this was no ordinary piano.  It was the traveling piano.  He was peddling this piano on wheels as he meandered through the streets, unhindered by the rain and wind.  

Tonight, Jeff has a paper due at midnight and is away late at the library (AND WILL BE FINISHED WITH THE MICHAELMAS (first) TERM), and unbelievably, all 3 of our children have separate plans.  So I made myself some tea, put the roses that I bought for £1 in the covered market today into a vase and read a friends blog and listened to her Christmas playlist while I wrote about 'A day in the Life.'

Whisper

I want to write more, but only write as I have it in my heart to do.  I have been stretched being here.  Reading and writing in my journal are not coming as easily as I'm used to... I think my brain and body are just doing what it takes to adjust to the new culture and surroundings.  

I desperately want to breathe in the beauty that is all around me, to see God's fingers moving in the rhythm of life.  I want see Him in the faces, the many many faces I see every day.  But for now I am trying to hear Him in the whisper, the very faint whisper that I know is there.  

He is here.  He is with me.  Emmanuel: God with us. With me.  

I know it and I tell it to myself a hundred times in a day, in an hour.  

And he is with my friend who has recently been diagnosed with cancer, and with my friend who is going through the deep pain of divorce.  He is with the family of the girl who was killed on her bike the other day riding to work, like she'd done a hundred times before.  Except this day was different.  She was on the wrong side of the road, or the right.  The driver.  He was 76.  What of his life now?  But God is with him too.  He is with the single mom of 4 that I know, who now has her daughter and boyfriend and their new baby living with her in her already tiny, government provided house.  

He.  He is.  

He is with my friend who has deep and unsettling questions about God, this God who she's served and loved for 25 years.  He is with me in all of my loneliness, this strange and unfamiliar feeling.  He is with my 3 children in their new and oddish world.  He is with Jeff swimming towards the voice of God in unknown waters.  He is with the sad man with hollow eyes that sits with his large furry dog on the streets of Oxford every night hoping for a better life than the one he has.  

Emmanuel.  God with us.  He is among, surrounding, in, with us.  He breathes His life in us and moves us here and there, causing our eyes to look up to see him in the people we meet.  The ones we see who don't see us.  The ones who walk past our house every day, who ride on the bus with us, pass us in the office, live next door. The ones that we've forgotten about and the ones that we live with.  The ones who we've hurt and the ones who've hurt us.  

He is whispering to us.  To see beyond to the ones who are hurting.  Who need hope.  The hope that He came to give.  He is hope.  He is.  He.  Emmanuel.  Hope is with us.  Whispering.  I want to hear the whisper.