The first morning of summer (winter) vacation

I graduated from high school twenty years ago this week. Last night, while attending the graduation ceremony of the school where I work my subconscious worked out this calculation and presented it to my conscious mind. Twenty years! Twenty years?  Merciful heavens. 

The twenty-years-ness of it seems to be sinking in today, and I'm a little dizzy with the reaction. How did such an important anniversary sneak up on me unawares? I feel sad today about that big chunk of time, but unaccountably since at every point of life evaluation between then and now, including today, I would say that I'm pretty pleased with how my life has turned out. I wish I had been to more places, but 35-odd countries isn't bad. I wish I had lived in more countries, but 1/3 of my life outside my passport country isn't bad. I wish I had learned more languages, but four isn't bad—for an American. I wish I had found true love, but always knew that was in the hands of God. I wanted to dance more, but there ain't that many dance halls in the bush! Ditto for concert halls and museums.  I'm an inventive and satisfying cook, I amuse myself with my thrift store clothes, I'm still in plays, I still always have a book to hand.  I'm pleased that I'm getting better and better at the craft of teaching, that I'm not bored or stagnant or stuck in my job or my life, that I've left a trail of best friends and kindred spirits as they and I have moved from place to place. I haven't wasted too many opportunities, as far as I can see, and I have actually made a big difference in a lot of lives—including my own—by the choices I've made. I have no bitter pangs of regret. Yes, I'd have to say, twenty years well spent. Why then does the quantity of decades make me feel so igg?

Today is the first day of the school break, so a certain amount of reaction is expected. I'm still too would up from school to relax and far too exhausted to do anything productive, so I slouch around in a grey-green fog, intolerant of being crossed by any animate or inanimate thing. Within a few days I'll be able to sleep in past my usual time and sit still for more than 20 minutes altogether, but today I'm coming down off the school semester, and I'm not very good company.

I'm commemorating the start of the school hols and my twenty years of graduation by eating a fine vacation breakfast and opening a bottle of the sparkling apple-peach juice made in my home state that is occasionally imported to my tiny corner of the South Pacific. I horde it for special occasions, and figured this morning counts. My breakfast tray has home-made bread and local marmalade, some of my precious Yorkshire Assam, a salad of local fruit with home-made vanilla and home-made yoghurt, and I'm reading Dorothy Sayers while I eat. I'm doing what I can to celebrate.

It's also worth noting that this is June in Ukarumpa and I am, for a rarity, not loosing any best friends to furlough or finish this month. I will shed some tears when I say farewell to some dear people today but none of the core group of my posse are headed for the airstrip.

I also observe that this school break—five weeks of summer (well, winter, really) vacation—is the first I've had in three years. Isn't summer vacation supposed to be a sacred privilege of those who give their lives as school teachers?  Yet my recent supply of summer vacations have been subsumed in furlough prep, furlough, and furlough recovery. I'm looking forward to a whole lot of nothing. A whole lot. Lots and lots and lots. In fact, I'm taking my Sayers back to bed.

"Inspiring Wisdom For The Play": a letter

The high school drama director I work with in Uka asked me to share some words of wisdom from my own experience acting with the drama kids.  Here's what I wrote,:

 

Hiya, actors!  I wish I could be there with you, but I'm having my own adventures here on furlough.  I'll see you in July (assuming I get my visa...).  Here are some things I thought about while being in my own show this semester, which closed last night (!!), and I thought I'd share.

 

The magic and communication and energy and meaning in a performance isn't in the script or in your acting.  It happens in that alchemical mix between one particular audience and your particular performance each show.  When it works it's so live and so heady!  I'm a bit high for days after a great performance.  (And last night's was really great, viscerally great.)

 

Take care of your fellow actors--part of the energy that can happen in theatre is because of true kindness and camaraderie between the cast and crew.  This includes being generous onstage by paying attention  and getting your lines right!    After you learn them, keep on reviewing them before every performance or you're lost.  Get your mind in the game and review your lines and your cues before EVERY performance.  It also includes praying for people, in groups and alone, when you think to.  It also includes not gossiping backstage, and always obeying the director.  Be your best self backstage, and it pays off in the performance--it's part of the unquantifiable magic of this complex creation that draws spiritual and creative energy from every part.  That's why every actor and ever crew is important because you can either poison or bless everyone.

 

Give energy to others on stage.  Try out new things and don't get stuck in a rut.  Pay attention to what's going on around you, not just to when you speak, and be in the moment (which you can't do if you don't know your lines!).  Touch other people, move around, figure out how your character feels about the others, and then let it SHOW in a big way on your face and your body as well as your voice.  (In fact, here's a dare--let your character find one or two more times to physically touch another actor on stage and see how it gives away more emotion and communication in your performance.  Go ahead, I dare you!  Give each other permission!)

 

Try out a different vocal pitch and rhythm than your speaking voice for your character.  The part I just played had a lot more of the angry desperate energy it needed when I pitched my voice near the top of my range instead of in my usual speaking voice.

 

Overlap the ends of other people's sentences so you sound like you're real people talking and not actors saying lines (badly)...

 

Remember that Mrs F and I love you!

See you soon,

Donna Smith

 

p.s. Partying with actors beats partying with anyone else.  That's all I have to say about that.

Hell? No, I won't go.

In case you were wondering how many months I can absorb bad language regularly before it starts to leak out again, the answer is, let's see, September, October, November...  six months.  Gaah!  I don't want to be a potty mouth!  I'm sad.  Look at me, setting myself up to be the worldly glamorous one back from furlough, being a subtle but poisonous influence on my students.  Sad, sad, sad.

In case you were wondering how many times I've almost died riding a bicycle six miles a day three or four times a week, the answer is only three, but all in a row.  Thanks, whomever is praying for me!

In case you wonder what happens to my creative energy to bead, sew, cook, dance, write, sing, meander, plan, draw, think, and blog in a term in which I'm taking three classes, working, and acting in a play, the answer is: it all, and I mean all, goes into classes, work and the play.  I have just enough left over to dress myself, comb my hair, and eat food that is recognizable as food.  But the play is f--oops--nevermind awesome.

In case you don't know who the best people are to go out dancing with, the answer is:  actors you're in a play with.

In case you wonder how many pounds I loose a week if I eat around 1600 calories a day, the answer is:  one.  How about that!  I'll end on that encouraging and sorta funny news.

"I no longer wish to be patient...." Mercy Amba Oduyoye

"I have arrived at a point where I no longer wish to be patient with sexism, racism, and injustices against the dignity that rightly belongs to beings made in the image of God.  These labels are loosing their force, but the realities they point to, the burden and the evil we are naming, continue.  Those who live under them feel their iron weight.  I may not be classified materially poor in my own community, but as long as I am a woman and black and refuse to accept any condition or attitude toward me that makes me feel less than accepted and included, I stand with all who are trampled upon and with all who want to struggle to see the end of inhumanity in the human community."
Mercy Amba Oduyoye
in "The Struggle  about Women's Theological Education" in Feminist Theology from the Third World:  A Reader,  ed. Ursula King, 1994.

Newmeze? Meh. A Restaurant Review

Tonight I impulsively went out to dine quite late, at the grown-up hour of 8:30, all by myself.  I'd toyed with taking advantage of the three-course Dine LA prix-fixe menu at the restaurant where I work by splitting it with someone to bring both the price and the volume of food within my range.  Lacking a pal to split, I hatched a new plan and headed out to a restaurant I've long been curious about in Pasadena's Old Town, Neomeze.  After the seat I was offered (in the bar complete with TV screens of sports and annoying 90's rock) almost drove me away, the hostess relented and seated me in the restaurant where I was bemused to discover my tablecloth was brown paper.  How conceptual.

Is being a waitress by (temporary) profession making me too picky?  Though inattentive, the staff were congenial, which does go a long way...or it would have if they hadn't brought me the wrong drink, neglected to send out the bread I asked for, sent my food out to the wrong table, sent me another table's food, neglected to clear dishes I was done with, made me keep the same cutlery through two courses, and made a mistake on my bill.  Even all this would have been overlooked if the food had transported me.  Unfortunately the most uplifting part of the meal was the psalm I read while waiting for my kibbeh to arrive .   

My glass of malbec went well with the psalm. It smelled of earth and mushrooms and ended up going well with all three courses, though it was served in a very trendy little bulb of a stemless glass that was too wide for me to get a good grip on with one hand, driving me to handle my wine glass two-fisted, like a toddler learning to drink.  Not endearing!  If I'd been offered crayons to draw on the paper tablecloth or the paper napkins perhaps I would have been mollified. 

The kibbeh, little meatballs of beef and pine nuts in a crunchy crust, were nicely textured and mild, going well with the smoky salsa that tasted a bit like harissa.  Eating sausage meze without bread didn't seem right, but my kibbeh and the lettuce it rested on were long gone by the time my pita, warm but sweet and doughy--perhaps in the gringo class of Weber's bread pita?--finally arrived after I pestered a busboy for them.  Second course was a tagine, the first tagine I've had a chance to actually BUY in a real RESTAURANT as opposed to the dozen or so I've made myself following, more or less, instructions in Paula Wolfert Moroccan cookbooks. I couldn't wait to taste a real, authentic tagine and learn secrets of flavour and texture that would inspire my future cooking.  What arrived was a well-cooked chicken stew, falling off the bone, with white raisins, fingerling potatoes and green olives in a bit of gravy, but tasting bland and under seasoned, with nothing to set off the sweet/savoury, fresh/cooked or smooth/crunchy dichotomy I love about Arab-speaking Mediterranean cuisine.  Fortunately I'd rescued my smoky harissa from first course to dump on the chicken to give it some heat and I munched away with my fingers (the pita having finally arrived, remember) contentedly enough.  This unremarkable stew cemented my plan to not return to this restaurant, reinforced by the minute by the insipid 90's rock that continued unabated and the TV screens showing sports well within view of me in the restaurant.

I rejected a plate of sliders (for my neighbors) and read my anthropology text until my third course, grilled halloumi served in a red wine fig reduction with an almond paste crostini was delivered to my neighbors, who had to exert themselves to get it delivered to me.  The jammy fig and wine sauce was the one delightful part of the dinner and something that I will probably attempt at home, though perhaps with a muscat, and then stirred into rose petal jam and served in a tart on top of a cream cheese custard, perhaps, or as a filing for a vanilla cake along with whipped cream and yogurt to temper the sweetness, with pistachios of course...  But I digress.  The halloumi was a little square of white salty cheese, crusty on the outside from being grilled.  The almond paste on a little slice of french bread seemed like crunchy almond butter from the store and fought a bit with the cheese for dominant salty flavour.  After a meal of dishes apparently adjusted in flavour for the uninformed gringo palate, I was surprised to get something that didn't taste like a normal American dessert--salty and savoury with only one sweet thing:  this halloumi dish would make a hearty and sustaining breakfast.  The only thing missing from my meze dinner was Turkish coffee with my dessert, but the waiter denied knowledge of any Turkish coffee and instead offered me, to my horror, regular diner coffee.  At this point my mind was firmly made up never to return.  My question for the owners:  why name your restaurant after meze if you dont' plan to serve the whole deal?  My question for myself: why oh why hadn't I found a real meze restaurant that served real coffee and tagine with salty pickled lemons and fresh parsley or crunchy almonds on?  

Demoralized, I returned to my anthropology text while I waited for the bill, by now driven to actively wish to depart by the badly mixed music of the recently arrived DJ--the signal, apparently, to dim the lights even further and for preppily dressed 20-somethings to fill up the bar and gaze at basketball on the TVs.

In fact, it seems that 'bar' rather than 'restaurant' is the dominant metaphor for Neomeze, based on their clientele and the indifferent food and service. 

At least Ira was broadcasting Science Friday to sooth me once I was back at the car.  Despite, or perhaps because of the disappointments, it was an educational evening.  Lesson 1:  The most enjoyable part of the evening was imagining that I would dash off to a restaurant, taste delicious food, experience a whole new place.  Reading menus was engaging and plotting out all the Dine LA restaurants within my hood was intriguing and far more satisfying than the reality of parking, ordering, and being mistreated by cook and waitstaff.  Also a lot cheaper; $2 for parking and $40-ish for my meal and wine.  Lesson 2: I probably won't like a restaurant where the staff are dressed more casually than the clients.  Lesson 3:  Listen to the music before you submit to an hour and a half of torment.  The music may also tell you who the bar/restaurant wants to please, and if it ain't you, then get out while the gettin's good.  Lesson 4:  My cooking expertise and experience serving at Elements have priced both my taste for food and for service way outside what I'm willing to pay at an American restaurant.  Alas!  Woe is me!

...and here's a head shot.

Now that I'm an actor (!) I need head shots; here is one my director took.  I think I am slightly airbrushed!, but my eyes are looking nice and green.

I auditioned for the play to learn empathy

I did!  I wanted to experience a play from the actor side because in Uka I'm always on the side of power, on the director's team, and I figured it would be good for me to scare my pants off by auditioning so I could empathize with the poor students shaking up there on the stage during auditions.  Then I got the part (I actually didn't see that one coming) so now I get to have my pants scared of by actually being in a play--empathy by the bucketloads being one result.  Of course, I also auditioned because I remember pining away for acting regularly during my years in PNG, and here was my chance--not everything I do is motivated by a desire to benefit my little middle schoolers!, though they do feature prominently, actually.  So, collecting observations from the point of view of someone who helps high school students put on plays, here's what I've learned so far.

I'm much, much, MUCH more nervous about rehearsals than I ever imagined I'd be.  Such pressure!  I don't even get so preoccupied about speaking in churches or other things that usually terrify people, but play practice--!  I'm not a nervous person, usually, but the adrenaline before those early rehearsals!  Even now, three weeks in, the hour or so before a rehearsal finds me with elevated heart rate and churning stomach.  Gaah!  Do my students feel this?

Some obvious ones:
You can have a line memorized perfectly at home and be a total dud at rehearsal.
And the corollary:  the line you get perfectly today and yesterday and at every previous rehearsal will be the one you flub up tomorrow. 
And the empathetic realization: you want to appologize and be forgiven, but this is tedious to the director, so you don't, but you just feel dumb and mad at yourself instead.

Being interrupted makes it harder to go back and do the scene over again.  Once you loose your head it stays lost for a while.

It's nice not being on the production team.  I can relax and just act! Whee!  I'm an actor! 


I have learned good characterization skills over the years, and am enjoying putting them into practice.  I keep discovering new things about my character!  This is such a fun process!  And watching my fellow cast members give stunning performances rehearsal after rehearsal--I learn a lot from them.  This is so cool!  Is this why we put on plays in Uka?  Whee!  Sign me up! 

Being on a cast of adults is quite different from a production of teenaged actors and techies.  We goof off as much, but the starting level of emotional and mental resources to draw on is greater, and we are better trained.  We can cut to the chase.  There's more spontaneous generation of character and movement and not all the wooden, poseable robot stuff that goes on sometimes with young actors.  Maggie this one's for you:  we're not afraid to touch each other. 

It's interesting observing a very different style of directing--quite useful. 

I wish we prayed more at rehearsal (as in, we don't at all) but this is becoming one of those boring themes of my life that you can hear me repeat and repeat:  Pray more!  Pray more! 

I had another few good observations saved up to write down, but I can't seem to recall them.  Time to go back to writing another paper, then go to bed.  Good night!  Come see us perform on Feb 18, 19, 25 & 26.

Catching Up with Last Month's Adventures

"Grab your coat and get your hat!/Leave your worries on the doorstep./Just direct your feet/to the sunny side of the street."  Unless you're sitting on the shady side of the street to watch the Rose Parade, then make sure you're wearing a cotton layer, a wool layer, a capeline layer, a wool layer, a cotton layer as well as your coat (wool/cashmere overcoat from a Glasgow thrift store) and hat (a blue watch cap from who knows where).  .  Also a scarf from Nepal.  Also sit close to your cousins for warmth.  Best float:  the reef fish.  Most annoying float faux pas:  bananas growing upside down on the Dole float.  Dole!!  Come on, people.  Best band uniforms:  the dancers and musicians from Mexico had gorgeous costumes.  Best music of a band:  the Marines have them all beat.  Coolest horses:  the Frisians have to win out.  Outfit I was gladdest not to be wearing while sitting on a float in 45 degree weather in a chilly had wind:a mermaid bra and shorts!

Strolling and biking along Colorado Boulevard as it filled up yesterday was a hoot.  We have one night of street people with fancy gear for New Year's Eve in Pasadena--air matresses, heaters, espersso machines, computers powered by generators!!  J.Crew was boarded up by 5 pm, and the crowd was honkng their world cup horns when I was going to work at 10 am Friday. I slept so much better in my own bed than on the sidewalk, and we ended up with a just fine spot near the end of the route, so no worries.

Disneyland with nine Smiths in the rain, preceded by a Bit Smith Sleepover, with three of us in the Garage Cave and getting up at, gulp, 5:30.  I wan't wearing my wool and capeline under my overalls, and I regretted it.  But, Thunder Mountain Railroad in the rain was thrilling!  I was amused.  Disneyland doesn't sell churros in the rain.  Bummer.  And, fair warning:  Michael Jackson as Captain Eo was far, far worse than I had ever remembered, and I shall bitterly regret those 20 minutes till the end of my days.  How could something be so bad? That level of eye-crossing insipidity couldn't be duplicated even if done on purpose.  Also, sitting still while watching it when already wet through made me hypothermic and miserable.  Luckily my chivalrous brother leapt to the rescue with chocolate covered pretzels and kindness.  Thanks, B!  You're a star.

Birthday museum visit to the Norton Simon with the siblings and the niecefews.  Culture!  How I love you!

Birthday dinner party, tablecloths and candles, transforming Chez Gene.  Menu:  babaganouj, tabbouleh, lentils stewed in garlic, and hummus with flat bread, pita, and baguettes; carrot soup; Indonesian rice salad and satay with peanut sauce; Balinese spice cake and vanilla ice cream.

Christmas with lots of rellies!, including three whole meals eaten at tables with real siverware and not plastic and not out of my lap.  Well done, relatives.  The cascading overflow of presents around the tree warmed my heart, too. :-)

A trip on the train downtown with cousin J to see a concert at Disney Concert Hall.  We got student rush tickets and ended up sitting in the SECOND ROW!  God be praised!  We also ate delish Mexican at the central market, where I bought some mole, frankincense and myrrh.  Nice for Christmas!

I talked my way into the church choir for a week so I could sing alto for the Hallelujah, my little Baroque oratorio fix.  I need much, much more of it in my life, but there's no space.  Singing under Dr. Hopkins back at UAF is a little different than singing for the church choir!  He taught me well, better than I ever knew back then.  Thanks, Dr. Hopkins, and I'm really sorry for all the days we giggled too much when we were dumb freshmen and couldn't behave well in public.


I worked a lunch shift where I handled 40 covers in 3 hours.  Yoikers!  Three months ago I could barely handle 12.

I auditioned for a play!  And got a part!!  And rehearsals start Saturday!!!  AND I have to be off book by then!!!!  I am juror #9 in Reginald Rose's Twelve Angry Men. Yes, all you smart aleks out there, I am an angry man.  Angrier than I can say.

No one else has died this month.  Good job, everyone!  Keep it up.  Give me another month, at least, to keep being sad about Bettie Yarita and baby Smith.

I wrote many papers that last week of school (five, I think, some short and three long).  I wrote one fabulous paper in which I learned a lot and enjoyed examining a piece of art (for Theology & Film).  I wrote another  fascinating paper (for Power Encounter) in which I stored up heaps of ideas to use in Uka and reflected on really mind blowing research and some practice with healing prayer.  And, I wrote one that never got beyond an 18-page rough draft into the 10-page final paper it needed to be.  I ran out of time, but I'd also already given up on success due to being from a different planet from the unfortunate youth who will be grading it.  Alas. Very compelling ideas for the class (Church and Mission in Global Context), but I'm afraid I'll end up with a low grade.  I'll be an example for my own students with my D in a grad class!  And I'll loose my scholarship!  Woe is me! 

I registered for classes that start in two days:  Anthropology, Leadership, Intro to Global Theology.

I read a few library books. 

That's all! 

Curry and Salad

So, I'm glad I'm flexible and all since my life has so much transition, but it's kind of flummoxing to find out just how far my identity stretches and reforms in each context.  It's exhausting and disconcerting to have to find out again in each new home who I am for that place!  We know our identity mostly by observing what we do day in and day out;  that's how we what kind of people we are and what's important to us.  For instance, I'm a reader, one of the cornerstones of my identity.Books!  Books!!  BOOKS!!!  Yeah, well, you get it.  Also big in the last decade or so has been that I cook.  I cook things!  Food!  Cooking!  Feeding people!!  I have a reputation in Ukarumpa as an adventurous cook, I cook all the time, I have people over a few times a week usually.  I cook because I love it, to experience joy in God's creation of flavour and texture and smell and the civilized and rejuvenating art of eating.  I explore new cuisines and rarely cook the same thing twice.  I cook a lot when I'm in Ukarumpa.  Dinner parties, tra la, tra la!

So what happens to my identity here?  Tonight I made curry veg on rice with a chopped salad, one of my so-common-I'm-bored-with-it meals in Ukarumpa...and it's the first time I've made anything like it in America.  I'm just not cooking!  Who IS  this person who doesn't cook?  What am I doing instead?  Skipping meals by working lunch shifts at the restaurant, eating Gene's food on Tuesdays, eating left-overs the rest of the time, eating meat all the time and bread I didn't bake and prepared food...  I cook about once a fortnight now.  I don't recognize myself!

Perhaps that's what's upsetting--I have this huge vocation for cooking and feeding people and yet it's not part of my life here, so who am I, then, this person who doesn't cook here?  At least I still dress myself from thrift stores and hand-me-downs (let's give a little cheer for scuffed orange Dansko clogs, the $7 answer to rainy days and blah outfits), and with a lot more daring than last furlough, where my need to blend in was far outweighing my need to be creative.  I still read the Bible!  I still cut flowers and put them in vases around the house.  I still think I'm going to get around to sewing much more than I actually sew.  I still hate to talk on the phone.  I still love hanging out with people and impromptu parties.  I still am always up for prayer.  I still like arty films and swoon at classical concerts (another cheer here for Disney Concert Hall, my new favourite building).  I still prefer to park a mile away and walk than pay for parking...not that *that's* part of my life in Ukarumpa.  I guess I haven't totally changed...but I miss the parts of me that can't be me here.  I'm making up for it partly by being the me that can go to concerts and museums, that can go on road trips by herself and be on the streets at night and wear pants every day.  Throwing the dinner party for my birthday was great, but was the first time I've cooked for people in...since Alaska, I think!  Gah.

So, here, to reassert my identity as a cook, is a recipe for you. 
So-common-I'm-bored-with-it Curry, with a salad on the side

1.  Set the rice on to boil.  I like brown rice if you have the time.
2.  Briefly toast some spices in hot oil until they release their aromatics (40 seconds should do it).  Pick your curry country of origin and choose spices accordingly.  I recommend cumin, coriander, cinnamon, cardamon and black pepper if you don't know what to add.  Diced chilies are awesome, but expect to cough as the heat releases the volatiles!  Wipe your eyes and thank God you're alive and cooking.
3.  Add a diced onion, perhaps garlic, depending on the curry country of origin, and saute until soft and somewhat coloured.
4.  Heave in any other veg whose flavour would be enhanced by a saute before the stewing, like celery and peppers.
5.  In need of protein?  Don't neglect the lentils or chickpeas.  Heave in some chopped sweet potatoes, carrots, tomatoes, or the like.
6.  Add water and/or broth and/or coconut milk and/or tomato sauce or canned tomatoes.  Follow your instincts.  The curry force is with you.  Cover tightly and after it comes to a boil, simmer on low heat until the veg are soft--which will be just as the rice is finishing, if I don't miss my guess!
7.  While that gets to know itself and the rice is coming close to being done, get your favourite chef knife or mandolin chopper and make a salad of finely sliced veg, such as cabbage, green onion, coriander leaf (called cilantro in some places), parsley, bell peppers (called capsicum in some places), tomatoes, carrots, cucumbers, daikon, or anything hanging around in the crisper.  Apples are fine, too.  Add green papaya or oranges--I dare you!
8.  Before serving, toss your salad in a simple dressing of lemon juice and salt, or be more adventurous and make a dressing balancing the sweet and salty with the following:  ginger, shallots, garlic, pepper, rice vinegar, katsup, soy sauce, olive oil, sesame oil, tamari, and a bit of water  (the Wagamama cookbook has a great Asian salad dressing) for a Southeast or East Asian style curry or pepper, coriander, salt, molasses, oil and vinegar for South Asian, or just yogurt, salt and lemon juice.
9.  Serve the curry on top of rice, with the salad on the side.  Eat!  I recommend finding a table with a tablecloth and lighted candles, but your lap and a TV will work depending on context.  Reading library books propped up on salt shakers is also a great accompaniment to this dish.  Eat your curry with a spoon, a fork, chopsticks or your fingers and bread depending on the curry's country-of-origin.  Obviously a pot of tea that compliments the curry's country of origin is not to be overlooked, though a big glass of tap water is quite satisfying.
10.  Box up left overs in lunch containers.  Your salad will be wilty if you dressed it tonight and eat it tomorrow, but the veg juices and dressing will make a nice condiment to dump onto tomorrow's reheated curry.  Rehearing this lunch in the staff room will get you a reputation as a good cook--no one else's lunch will smell as delish as your curry.

Contextualize This

Let me give you an example of contextualizing:  A Sunday school teacher takes a Bible story, say, Jonah and the big fish, and thinks how to present it to a class of 5 year olds.  What will work to make the message heard by them and what won't work?  Do you use simple words, bright colours, pictures, sounds, acting it out, short activities, tasty snacks?  You know already what would work and what wouldn't, right?  Now you can imagine this process that the gospel goes through when it moves from one cultural context to another.  This is the process of contextualization, figuring out how to communicate it and grow the kingdom in a context of a certain time, place, culture and people group. 

The ideas that are blowing my mind in my seminary education this week relate to contextualization in both Melanesian and post-modern contexts.  How do you make the gospel relevant to Papua New Guineans?  To the urban unchurched in the West?  The churches I know are best at contextualizing the gospel to people who are already churched.  As this group is lacking in, well, un-churched people, how do you re-imagine it and scrape away all that getting-in-the-way church culture in order to communicate he core of "Hey, God's Kingdom has come to Earth!  Whoppee!"?  I can think of dozens of things that my churches in Alaska, California and PNG are doing that were contextualizing decisions made by medieval missionaries as they moved from Roman into European tribal culture...and we're still doing them!!*  Perhaps it's time for a shift?  After 1000 years?  Can we change, pretty please?  I know that I have a low boredom threshold, but even you must get bored after a thousand years of doing the same stuff and thinking it's really the gospel!

Researchers (from Fuller, btw) Bolger and Gibbs look at churches that are trying to figure out how to make the gospel understood and powerful (contextualized) for the unchurched post-moderns living in cities in the UK and USA (book published in 2005), and they realize that these movements of believers have some things in common:  they are inspired by the life of Jesus and want to follow his example, even if that leads them away from the same old way we've done church, they tend to be very communal and also missional.  These churches are called "emerging" because something is changing, but it's too soon to see what a post-modern contextualized church movement will look like when it's full blown. 

Another Fuller researcher, Joshua Daimoi, was writing his PhD thesis " Nominalism in PNG" when I was first in that country as a fifth grader.  He says that the gospel is a mile wide and an inch deep in PNG because the church has overlooked the how Melanesian culture works:  it's communal, including an emphasis on harmony and structured around community leaders, and is holistically spiritual, not acknowledging the (false) western dichotomies of sacred/secular or  material/spiritual, for instance.  It knows that the spirit world is real, for instance, and that managing spiritual power is part of creating a balanced, healthy life.

So, getting to what's blowing my mind:  both the emergent churches in post-modern urban settings and Melanesians in villages and towns around the Pacific have these common characteristics:  holistic ways of seeing the world, acknowledging the spirit world, a desire for community.  Once this is pointed out, it's so obvious that I can never again not see it operating in culture around me.  (Which sentence should really be the theme of getting a seminary education!, don't you agree?)

Which leads me to my last point that bears much pondering (and it'll get fair shrift in at least two of the papers I have to write this week):  what is a modernist Western town like Ukarumpa going to do about it?  And personally, how do I live my life, as my Orthodox sisters and brothers would have it, as an ikon of the trinity, showing by all my actions that I'm living in fellowship with God?  The question specifically raised for me by Bolger's Church and Mission class is, how would I arrange worship services in Uka, all this being true?  The question from Travis' Power Encounter class that I'm pondering is, all this being true, how can we see inner healing and deliverance make a difference in Aiyura? 


Are the answers formulating themselves as we speak away back in some corner of my brain?  Probably!  Come, Lord Jesus!  Meanwhile, back to reading mind-blowing books.


 
*Church in rectangular buildings, for instance, on Sundays in the morning, one powerful man up front on the platform, platforms, windows, especially big ones with colours or arches, separate spaces for 'sacred' and 'secular' activities (that's not a medieval but a modern addition, and a poisonous one!), rich colours for church upholstery (though there was a Reformation reaction against that, and many protestant churches formed in revivals after 1800 or so are kind of self-consciously plain and not-pretty on purpose--though we seem to be getting over telling Protestant women to be self-consciously not-pretty), facing the front of the room, church buildings being separate and fancy looking and not like buildings for other purposes, singing or reading together, spiritual work being done by special set-apart people (clergy) done to the spiritually less-empowered (laity), people wearing special clothes for church, services that are discrete that last around an hour, special celebrations around Christmas and Easter (themselves pretty pagan in the way we still celebrate them, still using some of those Roman-era European tribal religious practices!), and my list could go on and on, but as this is a rant instead of a reasoned appeal, I won't bother to. ut it's in our practice, so doesn't it amount to a more powerful statement of belief for all that?

Hooray for miracles!

Happy first night of Hanukkah!  Let's remember the miracle of God multiplying the lamp oil in the temple while his worshipers were under siege.  God draws us to himself, and enables us to worship him, which is always a miracle.  Let there be light!  

I'd be lighting candles, but my menorah is in my other country. 

Do one thing every day that scares you

I've done my one thing that scares me today:  I tried out for a play!  "Twelve Angry Men" will be produced on the Fuller campus as "Twelve Angry Jurors"; it opens (and closes) in February.  I don't expect to get cast, but I figure I owed it to my students to experience the terror from their side, to increase my empathy.  Since I'm usually on the other side of the director's chair, I know exactly what was weak about my audition, so we'll see.  One on the directing team turns out to be the sister-in-law of a former Ukarumpa teacher, the famous Mr Shea.  All together now:  Small World.

In other art news, I had a fabulous, serendipitous Saturday:  Christmas shopping with cousin Ge. in Chinatown, which serendipitously segued into dinner in Little Ethiopia with other intercultural studies students, which then turned into free tickets to a LA Philharmonic concert with cousin J. at Disney Concert Hall, a building I've been panting to visit for eons.  Wagner in the Disney!  Food!  Shopping!  Urban mish mash at it's greatest!! Great days.

Yesterday I went to an advance screening of "The Adjustment Bureau" with Matt Damon and Emily Blunt.  It'll be released sometime next year, but we Fuller film students got a go at it so we could give feedback to the media company, and, I suspect, just because our prof is friends with the higher-ups.  We paid for our free ticket by sharing opinions afterwards, a fair trade in my opinion as usually tickets at that cinema are $14 or more.  I got a flyer for another advance screening on Thursday, and there's another screening of a movie at Fuller on Friday...but surely I should do homework *some* time!  Yesterday was the first time I've seen a movie in a theatre since I was in Australia in, let's see, 2008, so two and a half years ago.  Not too long!  I keep meaning to get around to seeing Harry Potter 7, but have been preoccupied with other life events, like the intensive class that met everyday, which coincided with me working five days a week, which all added up to inner turmoil.  And not blogging.

I do have a list of ideas to record, lots of them from my intensive class called Power Encounter, but feel overwhelmed with the other pages and pages I must write, you you, dear reader, will have to wait.  I know that all two of you are disappointed. Dry your tears!  I'm going back to my homework.

Free public lectures, I have waited four years to attend you!

In addition to all the other swoon-worthy cultural features of living in the USA (sourdough bread, streets with lines painted on and podcasts of This American Life to name a few), free public events like lectures and concerts make me giddy with joy.  I love learning things!  Aren't new ideas great?  I keep close tabs on events scheduled at Fuller and go to as many of them as I can.  Last week, in addition to the art opening and lectures mentioned in my last, I took in a rabbi's comments on his book about faith and today I am recently returned from the Missiology Lectures, an annual feature of the School of Intercultural Studies.  Today I heard Vinoth Ramachandra from Sri Lanka point out economic, social and therefore spiritual consequences of globalization.  I am totally out of my depth at analyzing current global trends--really, I have, to my shame, only the vaguest notion of current events--so I soak up anything on the topic I can get, and what a bonus to get the analysis from a scholar of international scope and renown.  His comments make me muse on several Big Ideas.  Notably, I continue my internal conversation/debate/war about how to use my resources.  The materialism of my culture goes deep in my personality!  How do I extricate myself and use my resources as Jesus, not advertisers, recommends? My lifestyle abroad is more luxurious than my national neighbors by a huge factor.  Here in the USA is my chance to acquire all the lovely stuff that I can't get over there--to gather up four years worth of it and ship it back there.  Stuff!  How I love it!  Sigh:  I'm sure we can both agree that consumerism is poisonous, but where do I buy the antidote? 

Ramachandra also challenges the church in the West to drop the business model of "partnership" that often means a one way shipment of money and advice (well, perhaps grant applications flow the other direction...).  All very well on the macro planning level of missions strategy, but how do I adopt on the micro level a listening and learning posture, treating people as the body of Christ instead of acting the expert, being a business partner?  This basic question of missiological strategy is complicated in my context:  to my middle school students, I am the expert teaching them.  Thus, modeling the humility and service required of Christian leaders requires a balance of using and giving up power--I think it takes effort from both students and teacher to make that discipleship dynamic work in the classroom.  Even more insidiously, adopting the listening and learning posture with my PNG neighbors is complicated by living on the big mission station, ensconced in the culture of my fellow expatriates.  What would it look like, for instance, to be in a posture of listening and learning from the teachers at the next-door national high school?  Do I drive or walk over with cupcakes one day and hang out in the teacher lounge?  Ask for their help in a spot of lesson planning?  What do I have to learn from them?

Well, I'm confounded, to a greater degree than perhaps comes through in these posts, and I won't be disappointed to discover that I'm troubling you to examine your assumptions, too.  Unless you're distracted by, for instance, having neck surgery this week and have other notions to ponder and other lessons to learn!


Turning over these scenarios of ministry in my head is a big part of taking classes.  I jot notes of ideas for ministry and lessons and testimony and sharing in the margins of my class notes and books.  I think of ways to help organize church services in Uka.  I wonder if my boss will let me teach a high school class on church history.  Ideas dart around in my mind, tangling themselves up in increasingly complex nets of connections as they get examined in light of church and chapel services, of testimonies from friends, of textbooks, of prayer meetings, of lectures, of sights seen as I bike and walk through Pasadena, of conversations with believers and non-believers.  The idea of dropping in on the national school, for instance, is getting examined by my busy brain from an anthropology standpoint, from a missiological one, but most critically from a power encounter one; Power Encounter is my new class, an intensive that goes three hours a day for a fortnight.  Sorcery and violence is regularly reported happening at the national school.  For that matter, the whole valley is filled with revenge killing, violence, conflict, and all manner of darkness.  Frankly, trotting over there on my own armed with cupcakes bent on performing a spot of anthropology would be foolish.  The first strategy for doing anything there would be concerted prayer.  Which thought is tangled in the idea net in my brain with an examination of my own practices of prayer, flagged with a large marker that informs me that I do not, in fact, devote myself to the kind of prayer that research says is a precursor to any kind of revival....much to ponder there, but to return to the thread:  my heart breaks this week as I think of how much prayer and warfare goes on and is still needed for my poor Aiyura valley. Teach us to pray, God!  O Lord, save!

I feel as if I live two weeks worth of life, filled with achievements and work and emotion, for each real-time week that goes by.   Let me make some lists to contain my scattered thoughts.

Art
I attended the Brehm Center lectures and art opening  of John August Swenson at Fuller last week Thursday.  Totally charming and moving silk screens of paintings by the artist!
I keep watching movies for class.  This week:  Run, Lola, Run and The Princess and the Warrior.
I'm re-reading Harry Potter as an antidote to reading theology (though it makes an interesting compare/contrast to the power encounter books about exorcisms, etc!)
I was paid $15 an hour to listen to chamber music--I worked a catering event for the LA Chamber Orchestra, and got to listen in to the concert part of the evening.

The Life of the Spirit
I missed church because I last-minute found out that I had to work!  Adrift!  Bereft!
My praying and debriefing friends on Mondays and Thursdays uphold me, not to mention the kindness of cousins, which is a continual theme of my life in Pasadena
Life is mad without a normal schedule, and I suddenly realized that it's been, like, nine days since I've read the Bible!  Ok, that's gotta change. (by contrast, I read Harry Potter with break fast most days...  Yeah, what about priorities?)
I go to chapel at Fuller when I can (more often than not), including last week, and am uplifted and moved. 
Think about this:  what is church?  for what ought believers go to church?  Is your head full of answers?  Have you thought this one through for yourself?  All that to say, that though I'm not a regular part of a Sunday morning congregation at present, I am seeking out and finding the elements of church--accountability, challenge, worship, teaching, prayer, testimony, service--in several venues during the week and I don't think I'm endangering my soul in the meantime by missing (through no fault of my own!) more than attending Sunday morning services.

School--I must write many, many papers:
reflections on each Church in Mission class
a description of a church outside my own denominational and ethnic tradition
three book reviews
a paper wherein I explore what the perfect church would look like, based on ideas from all the major church traditions
a write-up of a ministry project where I show a film and lead a discussion after
an examination of a film in light of Ecclesiastes
a journal of all the films I watched for the Theology & Film class
a paper exploring the experience of power encounter and how it relates to current and future ministry
yet another set of two book reviews
if I should be writing my papers, why am I wasting good writing energy on the blog?  because it's funner.  and punctuation is more impressionistic.

Life
I have had bicycle troubles
I have worked too much
I have been so tired that I've cried on my way to work!
I've shared about why I'm studying theology and how I'm working as a missionary at my work
I've tasted lots of wine and food at work--after shifts I get to taste, so as to be able to answer questions about the wine list
I'm starting to react against wearing work uniform clothing (dark shirts of the boring button-up variety, black pants and black shoes) by wearing many colours on my days off.  I was not made to work in a uniform-wearing job!
I have not had a day off in a fortnight
My wallet is fat from cash from tips, mostly very small bills

Divesting the Genestead of Kilos and Kilos of Guavas: story with recipe

The guava tree in Gene's driveway suddenly decided to drop all its fruit this past fortnight.  I hate to waste such good tasting food!  They're white and oblong, sweet and soft in the middle and sour outside but with tiny seeds, not like guavas I know from RCI and PNG.  (Are they feijoas? Identification unclear.) Korean and Philippina friends say that these are just the kind they have back home. 
To get rid of all this bounty of fruit, I've filled my bike basket with them and passed a bucket of them around in class, put them in a bowl in the common kitchen at school, given them to a colleague at work, taken them to a cohort meeting as party favors, and eaten bowls full.  Let's have a mooment for feeing virtuous about distributing locally grown pesticide-free produce on a carbon-neutral form of transport....ok, that's enough of that.  Besides, guavas fall through the gaps in my wire bike basket when I hit road bumps.  I left a trail behind me like the children with the bread crumbs in the forest.  Am I the Johnny Appleseed of Pasadena?  Donna Guavaseed?  New email handles suggest themselves.
Yesterday I finally got around to cooking them, and made three guava products: spiced jelly/spread, tart filling, and the guava paste common in Mexico an the Caribean.  Yum!  Horay for guavas.  To make all three, chop and boil guavas until soft in just enough water to cover.  Blend to desired texture (chunkier for tart filling) and add volume of sugar/brown sugar/honey/molasses less than or equal to the guavas (less for filling, more for jam).  For jam & tart filling, can mixture in jars.  For spiced spread, add cinnamon, nutmeg, fresh ginger and cardamom, simmer to blend flavours, then can.  Ask Gene for his not-yet-patented way of canning using the dishwasher...  For the guava paste, continue simmering, stirring constantly, for half an hour or so until the mess is reduced to a thick paste and is dark and all carmelly-coloured.  Spread in a thin layer on a silicone mat and cut into squares when cool, or fill silicone cupcake molds.  Yum!, like gummy bears but made with fresh fruit.  Serve it sliced with cheese and bread, or as a desert, or fill pastries with slices of it.  Now, who wants some guava jam for Christmas?

Contradancing in a Sari, and on Halloweeneen, Too!

I've been a grumpypuss about Halloween for years because I have serious moral reservations about celebrating the macabre and demonic however much I love fancy dress, but I have to admit that the holiday has been redeemed somewhat in my heart this year.  Here I am, back in the USA for my least favourite holiday, rolling my eyes at over-the-top horrible horror decorations on sale in stores and planning to avoid wearing anything that can be remotely construed as a costume so as to anti-observe it (actually, harder than it sounds with my wardrobe, I discovered!).  Yet, today I found myself putting on something of a costume to get in for free to my cousin's orchestra concert. 
Ok, so I conceeded to the holiday to save five bucks and here I am, wearing a sari as a sort-of costume.  Saris are every-day wear for me in PNG (I wear one maybe once a month or so to work or church or a concert or somewhere), but if I wear one in America it looks like a costume so it'll do.  Add lots of eye makeup, silver bangles, necklace, and earrings, and some jewellry in my hair and I'm set. 
At my cousin's concert I noticed right away how charming and festive it was to have everyone in the orchestra in some sort of goofy or scarey or at least bright costume.  It's like a party!  Even the death/demonic/macabre ones weren't winding me up like they usually do.  And the audience was full of people wearing silly things.  My grumpyness lessens. 
After helping out at my cousins' after-concert party, I still had 1/2 an hour to squeeze in attending the nearby contra dance, also a Halloween-themed affair.  The dance hall was filled with more people in silly costumes.  I danced with John Lennon, an minuteman, a jester, an explorer with a real pith helmet, some guy randomly wearing a rubber snake around his neck, a cool cat in a zoot suit, a ladybug.  I realized how much fun all this fancy dress is and that most people aren't being demonic, even inadvertently, but just being festive.  Without meaning to, I've been won over--but just a bit.  Besides, heaps of people told me they thought I looked beautiful in my sari, so I am gratified and feeling generous.
And so, I found myself pulling off two contra dances and two waltzes in one of the world's most un-contradancable outfits, unwinding and flying away as I went, my earrings tangling in my necklace, but full of the joy of dancing and enjoying the surprise of each new neighbor's costume.  I won't wish you a Happy Halloween, because I am still grumpy enough about all of it, but I can say:  nice costumes everybody, and thanks for making the effort. 

Movie review & musings: Departures

So far my favourite movie for Theology and Film class is Departures (original title:  Okuribito; directed by Yojiro Takita, 2008), which I saw tonight.  I admit to a nerdy/arty prejudice to like subtitled foreign films, but Departures also charms me with spot-on acting, a theme & story that will keep me musing for days, and enough comedy to make me want to show it to others.  This one is going on my list of movies to buy to take back to PNG.  

A dissappointed cellist returns to his provincial home town and finds work preparing the recently departed (hence the title) for being encoffined.  The goofyness and absurd side of life portrayed here made me laugh aloud--don't you agree that death can be awfully funny?  I also realized how I miss Japan after only being there for 11 days!  There's a lot of beauty in that country, and I like the Japanese aesthetic of restraint and balance--clear in this film, too.  

I may be swooning over it partly because I'm still off-balance from being bludgened by Deep Themes of Humanity in all the other films from the class, which have already put me way over my yearly limit for my bad language intake and viewings of deviant sexuality.  All true to life and representing the human condition, but a lot to digest.  Departures is just as true to life and profound, but gentler on me and I thank it for being so.  We've so far seen Crash, American Beauty, Crimes and Misdemeanours, Magnolia (these four are the worst offenders for bludgeoning me with despair-inducing human behaviour), Little Miss Sunshine (my second favourite of the class, though not without troubling dimensions), Moulin Rouge, Decalogue I, and Stranger than Fiction (also a charming favourite--I wanted to eat cookies and celebrate life after).  Yet to go:  Run Lola Run, The Princess and the Warrior, Slumdog Millionaire, Water, Atonement, Smoke Signals, and Field of Dreams.  Yeah:  not exactly a lighthearted distraction from my other classes, but a big dose of art nonetheless.  Students of Uka International School beware:  your once-and-future(-sometimes) English teacher is now more trained at examining film as an art form!  Though I don't think I've found a movie I can use at school yet...

How not to antagonize your students

Being a student instead of the teacher is good for me.  I'm reminded of two important traits of good teaching:  stick to the outline if you can (a three-day topic in one class has taken six, which means that other interesting things will be deleted!  angst!), and don't belabor basic points by talking on and on because your students will start plotting ways to escape and run away at the next break...assuming you remember to give them a break....   Another lesson that I'm not sure how to apply to my middle school classes is:  use up-to-date resources.  Harder to come by in Uka than here, for sure!

Like, Dislike

Written on 22 October; posted today.

Things I don’t like (a.k.a. Things that fill me with desolation):

• watching my bus pull away from the curb when I’m still ½ a block from the stop
• realizing I’m making a mistake as I’m making it...then being corrected by my boss
• when I’m so tired that I feel homeless, like there is no place on earth I can go to feel comforted

Things I like (a.k.a. Things that reinforce the hope in which we live):

• chèvre and sourdough
• bakeries and pastries, oh my!
• a homeless man who gives me advice about rain patterns
• crimson maple leaves that transform driveway overnight
• expansive, generous hospitality
• getting cooking advice from the chefs at the restaurant
• vanilla pannacotta in a cranberry coulis with candied walnuts and candied basil
• getting my side mirror fixed for free
• getting a job when I didn’t expect it
• friends to pray with
• check me out:  I’m out of the house at NIGHT, on FOOT, by MYSELF, wearing PANTS!  Whee!  Join the conga line:  “fur-LO!  fur-LO!  fur-LO!...”
• burning candles in my room, now that it looks like a room and not a storage shack
• more to the point:  burning black candles in an iron candelabra in my dimly lit room when I’m tired to tears but listening to recently-acquired, soul-bulwarking music
• a well-turned phrase in an essay I’m writing
• learning new things
• trying something scary and succeeding
• realizing that I’ve made two new friends
• …or maybe three!
• friends from different Christian traditions who can testify about different kinds of prayer
• Mauritanian mint tea, but mostly the serendipity that goes with it

Book review: Discipls of All Nations: Pillars of World Christianity, by Lamin Sanneh

What a find!  This book blows my mind.  Sanneh, an African immigrant to America who works out of Yale, is writing about the spread of Christianity--about Christian history--in all the regions of the world, not just the West.  The first chapter I read, about African Indigenous Christianity in the early 1900, has more never-heard-it-before, paradigm-shifting history than any of my reference books back in Uka.  His chapter on how Islam and Christianity interacted blows up a few historical genericisms repeated by history-teacher me. Too cool!  I swoon with the love of history written like this.  (Oxford UP, 2008)