"Lift up your eyes on high and see: who created these? He who brings out their host by number, calling them all by name, by the greatness of his might, and because he is strong in power not one is missing." ~Isaiah 40:26

In our busy, busy world, it's easy to get caught up in the noise, get swept from one cloud to the next, and miss the beauty of being... and other figures and phenomena all about and around us. Their being there begs us to pay attention to the lessons they might teach us. Our visual orientation, their proximity to us, their size, and their grandeur compared to our most glorious achievements... They speak; if only we have the courage to listen. 

My very brief thoughts on these things stem from a lovely lecture from Joanna Woo. She led a magnificent tour of the night sky, took time to explain massively challenging and complex phenomena, and she made them soooo accessible! SFU will host more of these in the future and are worth your time. 

https://www.sfu.ca/science/alumni-community/trottierobservatory/observatory/images-and-observing-reports-from-the-trottier-observatory/bubble-nebula-ngc7635.html

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pl3nycmyc9M (From a previous week... this week's vid isn't out yet).

Homeland

"How can I love my home without coming to realize that other men, no less rightly, love theirs? Once you have realized that the Frenchman like cafe complet just as we like bacon and eggs- why, good luck to them and let them have it. The last thing we want is to make everywhere just like our own home. It would not be home unless it were different." ~Lewis, Four Loves, p. 27

Quick Quarantine Catch-up

China, Thailand, Vietnam, Indiana, Ohio, Minnesota, and back to Indiana. We are displaced and out of our routine, but well... because I know you were dying to know:)  We were in China when COVID-19 had an earlier name, and when Wuhan had quarantined off its 11 million people. We remember our school under lockdown in China and what that meant for our life-situation, there.  On-campus, people who had traveled, some through Wuhan, were returning to campus and were told to quarantine and wear masks. The most impressive of reasons for our leaving Sias on Feb 10 - well into our third week of lockdowns - stemmed from our western colleagues' absolute contempt for these new regulations... and how that unnecessarily jeopardized the well-being of our friends and loved ones, there. So we booked tickets to Thailand, because they were cheap and because we thought this was the best situation for our family, given this context.    

Then things went from bad to worse. Squabbles over what to name the virus became a thing. Italy, Iran, and Korea were early to have significant outbreaks and then the US, too, experienced a major uptick in coronavirus cases. Our Sias admin assured us, even still, that the whole thing was blown out of proportion, China had safeguarded the spread, and we were going to need to return to campus late Feb, then early March, then late March, and then... we ran out of time on our visas. So we purchased $20 tickets for Vietnam, still being assured that returning to China was going to be required. The coronavirus moved in status from epidemic to pandemic while we were in Vietnam and her infections quadrupled. This caused a relative panic that translated into lockdowns, there. Pompeo issued a level four emergency and we got tickets back to the States, finally calling off returning as an option for the semester.  We quarantined in Indiana and a month later made our way to Minnesota, we are now back in Indy trying to keep up with it all.    

Amazingly, we are back in the house Holly and I moved to after we got married:) and have memories here that are both precious and painful, much like those important to this journey... out of one fire and into another, as it were. Indiana's numbers are increasing daily and the trend looks all too familiar. With all this political noise about our government making us all do something, they don't have the right to make us do, and the attempt to make this, too, about State's rights... the hubris, in these arguments, is overwhelming. We've chosen to wear our masks on the regular since January. It's tiring and I don't like it all the time, but "for the least of these", right? I'm grateful, I guess, that the choice is one I have the right to make... Perhaps if we were ordered not to, that might change things... In my view, whatever your trial or joy, we ought to act in a way that celebrates the good - for those around us... and for ourselves.    

In any case, currently, we are fixing-up my parent's place, reno-ing our RV:), finishing up an engine swap, finding supplemental-income-buy-and-sell projects, finishing my Sias responsibilities for the semester, and trying to make the most of what we have... God be praised! I don't mean to blame him for our acquisitions... just to celebrate the life that is ours to live and thank him for the courage to live it.  Love to all yours!

China: A Few Thoughts for Starters

I like China, but... spitting inside classrooms, kids coughing on kids, forced photos, gawking, line-cutting, people oblivious to people, and the constant melodrama of expectations stated and with disappointed returns. These are things I do not like. I like my students and my friends, here. They see us, at least many of them do.  I like our apartment and our campus. I like certain types of food, here, and their vast array of different types of mixes, sauces, which span the spectrum of bland to very spicy, from acquired tastes to simple and delicate. I like riding our scooter in every season and type of weather without all the paperwork and permissions required in the West, even in small towns. I like learning different conceptions of how to navigate life, different cultural norms that beget constancy expressed in ideas that contravene accepted western disciplines. Granted, I am very grateful for those, too. In short, China has a different palette, with a spread of colors all their own, and insistence on representations that at first glance seems hokey and half-assed, looking altogether different from our constructs.  Were we, my family and I, not insistent on grounding our experience in certain familial and religious valuations, we might have a different take away, but we are here... and different because we are here... and different because of the grounding we have as westerners who are experiencing this contrast through that lens. I like this journey and trust we are better for trusting God, here and there. 

Love Unbounded...

Better than Wine

When I look into your eyes I see sunbeams (alt. Brilliance burns in light blue sunbeams) A million dancing in the light (alt. a million dancing in your eyes) Blonde drapes drawn around your windows Drowning everything in sky Blur the best of deeper movement Inside every touch and kiss These lines wind there way around us And pull better into it Your love is better than wine Your love is better than mine Your love is better than wine Your love is better than mine

Cast the lots and pick perfection Woo the tempest back to peace Home finds itself inside you A woman better than my dreams Your love is better than wine Your love is better than mine Your love is better than wine Your love is better than mine

Virtue's book a room in your name And its better than it was She prefers you stay in her place I understand this because

Your love is better than wine Your love is better than wine...

Cast the lots and pick perfection Woo the tempest back to peace Home finds itself inside you A woman better than my dreams

Endings. Beginnings. Transition.

Sometimes it feels like its going to be easier to write an update if I just wait out the plan or until it or something else materializes. I have waited too long and now I am two months and some behind. The thing is, each month bursts with activity and commotion; trips, tours, atypical meetings, and random encounters; that was until I came back to the States where different activity and commotion swallows up my time - work, applications and reconnecting. Probably not so different from too many others. So here goes another attempt at trying to frame my present quandaries and the last two months’ highlights...

I’d like to think that significant change follows a significant experience... like journeying in Israel and Palestine - the encounter with people, engaging presence of place, and explicit contextualization of a document that I have grown to love. Affect is inevitable. The questions that are now a part of my every day experience surround how this affect affects re-entry. For example, does Wal-Mart feel more abnormal? Do everyday conversations annoy me now that I can understand every loose cannon and every slight? 

Truth is, my transition back into these American things is less obtuse than I would have imagined, though I am sure I still think about these things more than most. For instance, I almost think I wish I had been more annoyed with big-market-mentality and more empathetic to the little guy buried in the bureaucracy of having to maintain in the face of inexplicable bills and regulatory taxes. The sad reality is that even with invested experience, I don’t empathize too well or not well enough. Maybe this is the more bothersome reality. It seems like our situation is something dealt to us and if we are a part the majority, no matter how small, our language is full-up with compromise and syncretism is the new normal. We only celebrate separatism when things or people infringe on that systemic norm. I’d like to think that acknowledging these things is the first step to change. 

About finding a place back in American Christian circles, I have thought about how scary certain heritages are because of their propensity to carry gossip and superiority complexes like handbags... security blankets that dispel internal jealousy and anxiety. For instance, it wasn’t last week and I’m hearing a missionary with plans to land in South East Asia detail “news” about a brothers “sin” with that casual judgmental superiority so comfortably in place in our circles. This makes me sad and mad, especially because this is a pledged and funded emissary of the “good news”. What’s good? His obsession with fall-outs and commitment to make sure people get theirs? Its my belief that “Jesus became sin for us that we might become the righteousness of God in Him”... that “While we were yet sinners Christ died for us”... and that “If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins”. These are only a few texts that situate things for me. If God poured out his Wrath on his Son so we wouldn’t have to endure it, what is this new obsession in Evangelical circles with making sure people get theirs? I guess its not a new thing, just a bad ol’ thing. I feel like we are back with the Pharisees, stone in hand, asking for judgment. Its high time that we love grace and forgiveness as if it were something that we have been given...

June carried a number of tours and the frantic feeling that I would be moving state-side in July. The work was timely and needed. Then I transitioned into travel mode and attempted to say goodbye well; this, at the end of the month. Saying goodbye is especially difficult when you know you may never see people again. It solicited tears and reflection because I wanted to verbalize what I thought of their contribution to my life... it wasn't easy, because so many gave so much. This was a very meaningful time for me!     

Presently, I have been home a little over a month and I am feeling strangely normal. I have been working in Grand Rapids since the beginning of August. Water activities and church occupy my weekends: work and applications, my week. I am looking for a teaching placement or a research assistantship for next fall and I would appreciate your prayers in that. Once again I am in transition mode... searching for a proper job and trusting that God will provide for our needs in His way and in His time. 

May the Lord bless you and keep you! 

Seth